


Prelude to the End of the Game

by hollycomb



Series: Long Live the Fierce Machine [1]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Consent Issues, Enemies to Lovers, Evil, Force Bond (Star Wars), Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Leadership, M/M, Non-Consensual Mind Reading, Power Dynamics, Scheming, the knights of ren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-02-18 06:41:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 56,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13094568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollycomb/pseuds/hollycomb
Summary: Kylo has wrath to unleash and a destiny to fulfill.Hux has plans.**





	1. Chapter 1

Ren has tried everything. Patience. Aggression. Meditating, physically exhausting himself, fasting and indulging. Nothing has brought him even a sliver of insight into how to reconnect with Rey and thereby find the rebel scum she betrayed him for. She’s shutting him out, and without Snoke forcing him through he can’t fight past the barrier she’s created. He can’t even feel the cold shape of it. There’s just emptiness, a hollow ache.

It’s only one consequence of the loss of Snoke. Ren knew this drifting, engulfing uncertainty would be the price of slaying his master. Where Snoke once resided in his mind there’s a dull static that distracts from everything except the rage that won’t leave him. He killed Snoke to save her and she left him with nothing, untethered and lost, taunted by the whispers of a pair of ghosts that haunt his nightmares--

“Are you getting any of this?”

Ren looks up at Hux, lip raising. They’re in the war room on Hux’s ship, where Ren has been unofficially residing since the _Supremacy_ was destroyed. He rules the galaxy; he could go anywhere. He’s only here because he doesn’t know where else to go. Not yet, anyway.

“Right,” Hux says, clasping his hands together on the table. He sits across from Ren, smug and self-satisfied as ever, somehow. He’s also looking less and less like polished shit as they get further from the day when he watched Ren fail to kill Skywalker, which is itself enough to make Ren grind his teeth in Hux’s presence. “You weren’t listening.”

“Repeat yourself.” 

Hux sniffs. “Yes, of course. We were talking about encompassing Katalon into the Order, did you at least get that much?” 

“That is the only subject of this meeting.” 

“Just making sure you were aware of such, Supreme Leader.” Hux taps the screen of his handheld holo and a needless projection of Katalon appears, rotating over the table. “My proposed plan for occupying and colonizing Katalon is more complex than what we’ve done in recent weeks with less sophisticated territories. Katalon is relatively wealthy, and our reports indicate they have significant weaponry. For that reason, we will need to launch a full-scale invasion, utilizing--”

“No.” 

Hux stares at the rotating holo for a moment before looking up and giving Ren the most measured look he can manage. His nose twitches once. Enraging him is addictive, and sometimes Ren denies him what he wants just for the joy of feeling his hatred spike, but on this point Hux is actually wrong. 

“No?” Hux says, slowly. Mockingly. “You have an alternative plan of attack?”

“There will be no attack necessary. Every other system has caved at the slightest pressure, based purely on our reputation. They have some pathetic cache of weapons? Who cares. They know of Starkiller. They assume we have similar devices.”

“Well, we don’t. Starkiller was unique. Its mechanism was merged with the organic properties of the planet it was built upon, and the crystal supply alone took years--”

“They don’t know that. Approach them as an envoy as usual. With a single squadron, fine. Invading would be a waste and an embarrassment. We don’t need to make that much of an effort. It would look weak.”

Just the word ‘weak’ is a deeply personal insult, coming from Ren and spoken to Hux, who pulls his fisted hands into his lap and trembles with the want of arguing further. He’s trembling for another reason, too, so he squashes his objection, snaps off the holo projection and tucks his handheld under his arm.

“Yes, Supreme Leader,” is all he dares to say before going.

 

**

Ren meditates. He hates that doing so still reminds him of Skywalker’s school. Snoke taught him meditation skills as well, but Ren learned it first from Skywalker, and he feels the old bastard sneering at him from afar every time he does it. Skywalker’s threats about remaining with him after sapping himself dry on that stunt were nonsense, lies, except in the case of Ren’s memories. There are also the dreams, but. Those are not real. 

Within meditation he finds more memories, which means that he’s failing to really give himself over to the exercise. There’s an angry strain to everything he’s done since killing Snoke. He feels like he’s running in circles, always coming back to the same moments when he failed: to sway the girl fully under his influence, to anticipate Skywalker’s ability to further ruin him, to push his mother out of his mind when he was preparing to fire on her ship. The three of them circle him like tormentors, only none of them are really there. He would give anything for even a glimpse of Rey, any hint about where she’s hiding with those cowards. When he finds them again he won’t hesitate to jam his thumb onto the trigger and finish it all, for good this time. 

Only he’s not finding Rey in his threadbare searching, or anything. He’s mostly sitting with his head in his hands and seething, remembering Skywalker’s face on the salt flat, his face in the hut that night, his menace neverending even now that he’s destroyed himself just for the sake of having one last victory over Ren. 

Ren’s door chime has been sounding on and off for several hours. He hates Hux’s officers and wishes Hux would hurry back from Katalon to deal with whatever petty problems they’re having. Hux has to act as the face of the Order on these missions because of his speech before Starkiller was fired. People in even the farthest reaches of the galaxy have seen the holo recording, and they know what Starkiller did upon Hux’s command. They fear Hux especially therefore, often handing him the keys to their kingdoms as soon as he arrives with stormtroopers marching behind him. It’s ironic to Ren, even funny, as Hux is the least frightening person he’s ever met. He’s got the qualities Snoke kept him around for, however: rabid obsession with his orders, single-minded blind spots that can easily be manipulated, and a kind of uniquely ambitious mania that irritates the fuck out of Ren almost as often as it serves his agenda.

“What?” Ren roars when he finally opens the door to find a middle-aged officer with wide, pale eyes cowering outside. 

“Supreme Leader, sir,” she says, posture straightening. She’s a senior officer; Ren was told her name and rank at some point but he has no idea what they are and is above using the Force to find out. “There’s been a complication with the mission to Katalon.” 

“Something you cannot uncomplicate yourself?” 

“Yes, sir, unfortunately, ah, it’s actually more of a-- Catastrophe. I was asked to summon you for a briefing.” 

“Brief me now. What happened.” 

She seems to want to look behind her, as if Hux is standing back there with a disapproving glower, disliking the idea of sensitive information being delivered in Ren’s doorway instead of a secure conference room. Ren doesn’t have time for protocol, or for another catastrophe. 

“It’s the General, sir,” she says, almost whispering. “His convoy was attacked on Katalon. Only a few troopers survived and were able to return to the _Finalizer_.” 

Ren is surprised by the icy sinking horror at the center of his chest, then by his certainty that Hux isn’t dead. 

“Those surviving troopers have told us the General is being held by the Katalons,” the officer says. She looks sincerely upset, reporting this. Hux’s officers love him, inexplicably. It’s one reason Ren hasn’t replaced him. “They’re demanding a hefty ransom for his return, the details of which--”

“They think he’s important.” Ren sniffs, rage climbing through him. He’s furious with Hux for being right, and more so for provoking whatever that ice cold feeling was just now. “We’ll launch a full-scale invasion,” he says, the words tasting bitter on his tongue when he thinks of how Hux would sneer through a smile if he heard them. “Scorched earth. Make an example of them. Tear their cities down. They’re just another planet. We don’t need to take them alive, so to speak.” 

“Yes, sir. And-- The General, sir?”

“Reclaim him during the attack.” Ren considers the potential complications, his rage twisting into anxiety and knotting his stomach. “Send a stealth squad to recover him before the major assault.” 

“Yes, sir.” She blinks and seems to expect something else. “Shall I escort you to the war room to oversee the plan of attack?”

“You need me to spell out the details? Find Hux, tear everything down once you have. Make them suffer for defying us. Is there some intricacy to this strategy that you don’t understand?”

“No, sir. Very good, sir.” 

Ren slams his fist into the entry panel, shutting the door in her face. 

He walks through his rooms with his hands in fists, suppressing a scream of fury. Hux is not worth that kind of loss of control. Or any stress at all. Ren can replace him if something goes wrong. He’s considered it before. Hux has no business inspiring any sort of reaction from him. Ren will leave it to Hux’s officers, fond of him as they are. It’s their business if they want him back, not Ren’s. 

Fucking Hux. He’s probably gloating, enjoying captivity, just because he was right and Ren was wrong. Hux would die happy even under duress if he got to cling to that with his final breath. 

Except that he’s a coward who’s never been tested by any battle but those he oversees from some safely perched bridge. He’s probably terrified. They might torture him. Ren would have expected to enjoy the idea. 

He kicks the wall hard and curses it when the pain streaks all the way up the back of his leg. This catastrophe is Hux’s fault. He should have argued his point harder in their meeting. He should know Ren isn’t going to choke him every time he disagrees. Ren had liked the idea that it only took one Force choke to make Hux always fear more attacks and therefore obey him, but now it’s fucked them both over. 

“Fuck!” 

He hurls a chair against the wall and considers leading the stealth mission himself. But how would that look? And why would he do it? Let them all see how expendable Hux really is to him. They may soon have to live without him anyway, and it’s always been Ren’s plan to get rid of him eventually. The past six years just haven’t presented the opportunity. Maybe this is it.

He sits on the floor, in the spot where his now smashed chair resided. There’s a kind of whining buzz in his ears. 

“Rey?” he says, involuntarily, looking up. 

But it’s not her. It’s nothing. Just his own flailing mind, trying to process what he cannot possibly consider another failure. This is minor. Nothing, really. To hell with Hux, if things don’t go according to plan. Ren has lost lightsabers that mean more to him than that man does.

 

**

He’s pacing the halls of the _Finalizer_ when an officer finds him and informs him that the stealth team was unable to locate General Hux on Katalon. 

“The Katalon tribunal says that he’s been taken off planet to a secure location,” the officer says. He’s a young one, his energy dripping with the terror that Ren is going to slam him against the opposite wall for being the bearer of bad news. 

“Does our intelligence confirm this?” Ren asks, resisting the urge to do exactly that. 

“Yes, sir. They sent a communication with a holo image of the General. It’s untrackable, but it’s definitely not coming from Katalon.” 

“Then burn it to the ground.” 

“The-- Which, what--” 

“The entire planet. I want the galaxy to see it burning from their backyards and know what it means to fuck with the First Order.” 

Hux would roll his eyes at the use of informal language from someone in a leadership position. Ren has been meaning to tell him that Snoke referred to him as a rabid cur. 

Now he might not tell Hux anything ever again. Which would be fine. Hux has been a constant in Ren’s life since Ren joined the Order, then a reeling mess of an overgrown child whose clothes were still stained with the blood of his former classmates. They didn’t work together then, but Hux was around. The hair made him stand out. There’s nothing more to him that’s particularly special, beyond his rabid cur-ness. 

“Sir?” the officer says. 

“What.” 

“I was asking, ah. What steps we might take to try to track the cloaked message they sent. To try to find the General, that is, sir."

“I’ll take care of it myself.” 

The officer nods, bug-eyed. He doesn’t think Ren will even try to take care of it. They’ve all heard about what happened during the battle of Crait. That noise Hux made when Ren threw him out of the way. Ren wasn’t considering the proximity of the wall, wasn’t considering much of anything but needing Hux to shut up, but he had basked in Hux’s humiliation like a balm as he struggled through his own, in the aftermath. 

“Where’s this holo they sent,” Ren says, stepping closer. “I need to see it.” 

He’s taken to a private comm station. He locks its operator and everyone else out, bracing for the message these brazen bastards have sent. He’ll kill the entire Katalonian tribunal himself, for thinking they could make demands of him. 

It’s never bothered him to see Hux in pain before. Snoke knocked Hux on his ass just as often as he blasted Ren for disappointing him. They both took it in stride and took some pleasure in seeing the other taken down a notch when it wasn’t their turn. Ren has hurt Hux himself, more recently. It didn’t feel the way he’d thought it would, but Hux took that in stride, too. He didn’t even bruise as easily as Ren had assumed. Ren had looked pointedly at Hux’s neck some days later, when they were making plans together. Nothing.

No other figures appear on the holo, just Hux. There’s no sound. Hux is bleeding from the corner of his mouth, and his right eye is swollen shut. He’s prodded with a shock baton from offscreen. He throws back his head to scream in silent agony, then the recording cuts off. 

Ren watches it ten times, not sure what he’s looking for. His heart is slamming. This is a personal insult to him and his regime. He will treat it as such. By the time he rises from the console his jaw aches from clenching. It pops uncomfortably when he tries to release the tension. 

First, and without really deciding to, he trashes his entire room. Violence helps him focus. Sometimes. He’s breathing hard when he’s done, shaking from exertion and adrenaline. He’s also ready to act, the raw energy of this ordeal unleashed onto his wrecked things. He’ll have to use the Force to find Hux. That’s why he’s so enraged. Using the Force to find people has been his personal hell since Rey deserted him to return to her fellow traitors. 

This is different. Rey is likely blocking him from finding her with the Force, but Hux has no such ability, despite his mixed success with keeping Ren out of his mind over the years. Now he’ll be reaching out, wanting help. Maybe not from Ren, but Ren knows how to listen for messages that weren’t meant for him. He meditates in the middle of the mess he’s made of his room, breathing deeply and focusing on what he saw in that holo: Hux’s pain. His isolation. The insult of it, directed at Ren. 

He’s been wanting to experiment with Force links anyway, obsessed with the idea of intentionally creating one the way that Snoke did. Snoke was powerful in ways that Ren is not, but some lore speaks of specific dark power obtained by killing one’s master. It makes a kind of sense. More sense than killing Han Solo did, in hindsight. Ren felt only weakened by that, so killing Snoke should have the opposite effect. He’s waiting, seeking a sign. Patience has never come easily to him, and sometimes it won’t come at all. 

He grits his teeth, fighting the inability to concentrate that has plagued him since Skywalker made a fool of him. 

But fighting is exactly what he can’t do when faced with a task like this. Fighting will keep him in his own mind, focused on his struggle rather than floating free to find answers. He takes another breath and exhales slowly, uncurling his fists over his knees. Meditation is served by peace, a state that does not come naturally to him. One of his first acts as a student of Skywalker was to snap a practice staff in two because he was the last of his class to solve a puzzle that required meditating to unlock a clue. Ben couldn’t find shit, and it didn’t make any sense. He was the most powerful of all of them. Even the oldest students couldn’t knock the spear from his hands during sparring sessions. He made fools of them during those lessons, always. He loved it. 

That’s something: victory. The now distant memory of it. It makes no sense that he’s ruling the galaxy and yet wandering the halls of this ship every day feeling like he’s lost, like everyone is laughing at him. He’s actually ahead of the game, despite some setbacks. Soon the galaxy will see him burn Katalon to ash. He just has to find Hux first. If they take a single thing from him, even a thing as insignificant as Hux, his victory won’t be complete. 

Something prickles at the edges of his clearing mind: a spark, a start. It’s to do with Hux’s insignificance, maybe, or the glorious destruction to come. 

It’s the intersection of both. Hux becomes the clue he needs to solve the larger puzzle, and a long withheld understanding reaches him in the dark. There’s a candle glowing at the center of it: that hair. Ren used to spot it across crowded flight decks. In the mess hall that he rarely visited. At the end of a long corridor where Hux stood barking at some inferior. Thinking himself important. There was so much durasteel, uniformity, the blank shine of stormtrooper armor, pale faces under dark caps, and then there was that flash of red. 

Not red-- It blurs when he thinks of it that way. Red is a warning blinking on a console, and the blood spill of color from beneath the salt on that planet he wants to blow up. No, Hux’s hair is something else. It’s softer, more human. Orange, like the sun going down. Like the sticky flesh inside some peeled fruit.

Ren grabs hold of that color now and uses it to pull himself along a very fine, very long thread, away from the _Finalizer_ and his own body, into a dank cell where his arrival provides the only light. 

Hux is curled against the wall. He doesn’t even look that surprised when he turns to stare up at Ren. Typical, ungrateful. The sleeve of his tunic is torn at the shoulder. They’ve taken his coat and his hat, and, for some reason, his boots. Hux shifts to get a better look at the apparition of Ren, blinking up at him with his unswollen eye. His right eye looks worse than it did on the holo, purple and shiny. 

“Well,” Hux says. His voice is raw from screaming, but he still sounds smug. “It would seem I was right.” 

“Shut up,” Ren says, and he feels their connection flicker, the wall Hux leans against seeming to slide away from him. “Wait!” 

“Wait for what?” Hux is scowling, coming back into full view. “How are you doing that? Is this the Force?”

Ren won’t deign to answer such a stupid question. “Where are you.” 

“Do you think they told me? You’re the mystic, figure it out!” 

“Is it cold here, warm? Are you underground, on a ship? Give me something to work with.” 

A clue, Ren thinks, resentfully.

“I’m on a planet, I think.” Hux groans when he shifts again, and swallows in a way that sounds painful. Except that Ren can’t hear it-- He _felt_ it, like a dry ache in his own throat. They’re connected, Ren realizes, blinking. He can’t see out of his right eye.

“And?” Ren barks. “Tell me everything. I don’t know how long I can make this last.” 

Hux snorts. He’s imagining Ren saying that to someone in bed. Ren snarls and steps backward. Hux’s mind is a terrible place, predictably. 

“Oh, let’s see,” Hux says. “As I expected, we were not welcomed with open arms on Katalon, and our pathetically understaffed convoy was easily overwhelmed by their army. They killed most of my troopers, tossed me around a bit while demanding information about the Order, and I assume they’ve asked you to pay a ransom, since I’m still alive and they took a holo of me being electrocuted.” 

“Yes.” 

“And you’re actually trying to rescue me? Funny, I assumed you’d rather I die than face me and admit you were wrong.” 

“Maybe I’ll go that route if you keep tempting me to. Anything else? Smells, sounds, things you overheard?”

“I don’t speak their language, Ren. They weren’t impressed by that either, when I arrived.” 

“You didn’t tell me that part!”

“ _When_?”

“During our briefing about the mission to Katalon--” 

“I did tell you, you fucking--” Hux reels himself in, but he’s still snarling like he wants to spring up and bite Ren’s nose off. “Supreme Leader, I am certain I mentioned as much. Regardless, since you’ve been kind enough to locate me through Force magic, I hope you can determine where we are through the same avenue, because I have no reports of notable smells that might lead you my way, alas.” 

“I can smell your piss-stained pants from here,” Ren says, wound up by Hux’s ability to sound even less respectful when pretending to defer. 

“Yes, well, I’ve seen you wet your pants at least twice due to being shocked by Force lightning, so let’s not pretend you’re immune. Sir.” 

Ren had hoped Hux hadn’t noticed that, but of course he did. His hatred for Hux in the mentioning of it only makes his surroundings feel clearer, more present. 

“If I can meditate while I’m in this state,” Ren says, “I can probably determine where you’re being held.” 

“Probably,” Hux mutters, dragging an unimpressed hand over his bloodstained face. 

“But that would be like meditation within meditation,” Ren says, ignoring him. “And I don’t know how to do that.” 

“Too bad that girl killed your master.” Hux gives Ren a pointed look, not the first one he’s dared when mentioning Ren’s claim about how Snoke died. “Or you might have consulted him. Of course, we wouldn’t likely be in this mess with Snoke in command.”

 _Or me_ , Hux thinks, as clearly as a cup of wine thrown in Ren’s face. 

“You’re in my head,” Hux says, feeling him hear it. His left eye widens. “How, is that how--” 

“Relax,” Ren says. “I don’t give a shit about your inane inner thoughts right now.” 

_But you do give a shit about--_

Hux won’t let himself finish the thought, aware now that he’s being observed from within, and this rejection is what sends Ren spiraling backward through the darkness, back onto the _Finalizer_ and into his physical body. 

“You idiot!” Ren shouts, but now he’s alone in his room, his head aching and his throat very dry. 

He stands and paces, considering the validity of just turning his back on Hux and leaving him to die in that cell. Ren could still laugh at the Katalonians for thinking they had something he wanted and finding out they were wrong. 

But the Starkiller does have value, even if this particular, now-doomed planet wasn’t impressed with him. Hux commands his own kind of respect, from the army and from those who cower at the memory of his shrill little speech and what came after. While their underlings in the Order fear Ren, they don’t have the same kind of respect for him that they have for Hux. They resent Ren differently when things go wrong, in a way that sows discord. Ren knows well how easily loyalty can be lost when people feel ignored. He has to get Hux back, much as it pains him to think of working so hard for such an ingrate. 

He steps into the sonic shower in his quarters and spends an overlong time beneath its blast, trying to recenter himself. He feels like he left some piece of himself back there with Hux, and mourns for what Hux will do to it if he has. Any piece of him that falls into Hux’s hands will be chewed up or ripped to shreds, though with Hux so alone and desperate right now maybe that won’t be the case. Maybe he’ll cup his hands around whatever scrap of Ren he can find and whisper begging apologies to it. Ren imagines him on his knees in the dark, blowing on some little ember Ren left behind and waiting for him to come back. 

 

**

Things start to go wrong right away. There’s a dispute with their largest fuel supplier and nobody seems to want to deal with it without Ren’s input, even after he’s told an ascending chain of officers that he’ll have them executed if they don’t handle it themselves. Ren can’t tolerate the petty smallness of people who are in the business of selling things, especially crooked ones who worked their way up from some black market enterprise that led to a partnership with the Order in its earliest fuel-needing days. The officers tell him again and again that the supplier is asking for Hux, demanding to speak with him personally, and should they disclose the situation or not? 

Ren blows these requests for guidance off. It’s not like they’re running out of fuel. Not right away. He’ll get Hux back and make him deal with it immediately upon return. 

Less important issues make their way to his attention as well. Half of an entire lower deck ends up flooded with two inches of water because there was a screw-up with some technician duty schedule that Hux personally oversees. 

“So execute whoever screwed it up for gross incompetence,” Ren says, and then he shuts his door in the face of the boggling officer outside. 

He’s certain that his orders to have various people executed for annoying him aren’t being followed, which is itself a problem. The issue is in part that he can’t tell one of these bloodless officers from the other. In some cases the person reporting the problem might also be the person who caused it. Ren isn’t interested in the details. He just needs to get Hux back. The maintenance droids still haven’t shown up to clean his trashed room, and he’s too proud to ask what the protocol is for placing a special request. Normally he’d just yell at Hux to take care of it. Even when they were co-commanders, Hux saw to Ren’s requests when Ren was on the _Finalizer_ , lest Ren smash his lightsaber into some part of Hux’s ship in frustration. Hux did this with an eye roll or a smart ass comment almost without fail, but he did it. 

Another holo recording arrives before Ren can successfully connect with Hux through the Force again. This time there is sound. Ren had thought he’d heard Hux scream in pain before-- When? He’s not sure now, only that he’s never heard Hux in pain like this. They snap one of his fingers, a clumsy Katalonian paw reaching into the frame to do so. It’s the index finger on his left hand. There’s more electrocuting, Hux gasping for a few pathetic, reedy breaths in the aftermath, then the holo shuts off. 

“They think-- Why do they think we’ll be moved by his pain?” 

Ren shouts this at the officer who is waiting outside the comm station at central command, which she was manning before Ren sent her out of the room. She’s upset for Hux; Ren can feel it. She saw the holo first. 

“Forgive me, Supreme Leader,” she says, frowning. “I don’t understand the question.” 

Ren decides on his way back to his room that he knows why: because everyone in the Order is meant to see Hux as an extension of themselves. And he is, of course. He’s their property. He belongs to them. Those dishonorable cowards have him, and they’re making less of him while they hold him. Laughing, probably. Overestimating themselves as adversaries to the Supreme Leader of the First Order. Ren will take them apart piece by piece.

He’s just got to find them. After seeing the second holo he’s rattled, prepared to suffer through hours of failure before he can center himself into meditation, but he dips into it with ease almost as soon as he’s alone, seated on the floor in his main room, the debris of everything he smashed pushed up against the walls now. 

There’s something vivid that they offered him in that holo, bigger than a clue. It’s a beacon, because there was an additional dimension to the recording this time: sound. Ren holds the sound of Hux’s screams just over his slamming heartbeat. _Find that, go there, let everything else fall away_. And it does.

Hux is lying on the floor this time, still against the wall. Something about the way he’s huddled there as if trying to seek comfort from the durasteel makes Ren wish he wasn’t seeing this, but he needs one more push in the right direction, and only Hux can give it to him. The radar team’s attempts to track the source of the ransom demands have failed, resulting in more threats of execution from Ren that haven’t been carried out. 

“Wake up,” he says, that cold thing opening again in his chest, a blooming icicle that slices into him. He’s seen Hux beaten, knocked down, trembling on his knees, but never looking so defeated. “Hux!” 

“Mnh?” 

Hux turns onto his back with a pained wince and a hiss. His left cheek is bruised now, his hair darkened with grease and hanging limp around his face. The way he hugs his arm to his chest seems unnatural. He yanked it out of socket when he was being electrocuted. Ren remembers it, or something near to that, a borrowed memory that surfaces like a gut punch. He can feel it, too, pain shooting from his shoulder to his elbow. 

“That’s not really you,” Hux mutters. He pushes himself up so that he’s sort of sitting, his back propped against the wall. “Is it?”

“No-- Yes. I’m not here yet, but I’m-- The Order is coming for you. Have you learned anything about where you are? Even the smallest detail might help.”

Hux moans and shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’m a bit disoriented.” 

“Think. Pull yourself together.” 

Hux sniffs. He finds something funny about being told to do so by Ren, who doesn’t have time right now to wonder why that is and doesn’t care enough to be insulted by Hux’s amusement. 

“Have you ever been to Arkanis?” Hux asks.

“Fuck no, what’s that got to do with it? They wouldn’t bring you there, we control that planet.” 

“Yes, Supreme Leader, I am aware.” Hux speaks slowly, as if every word takes some effort. He’s still got his nose in the air, like he can talk down to Ren under any circumstances. “I grew up there. We had-- Algae, on our ponds, this particular scent. It’s here, it’s similar. And there’s some kind of train or mine cart that goes by overhead once every few hours. It rattles the whole cell.” 

“That’s good.” Ren nods to himself, disliking the pity he feels for Hux and how it’s clogging up his chest like a breath he can’t expel. It’s only because they’re connected, because Hux feels sorry for himself. “Okay. Anything else?”

“Mhmm. I don’t know. I feel-- Different, when you appear. Better. Why is that? It’s never been the case in reality.” 

“It’s because I’m physically healthy, and we’re connected. Through the Force, I mean. For purposes of my finding you. According to my design.” 

“Oh. Wait, what?”

“You’re sharing my energy, that’s why you feel stronger. I feel weaker, accordingly. Your ribs hurt.” Ren touches his own chest, pressing at a tender spot. 

Hux whimpers. “Don’t do that!” 

“Sorry. I’m still working out the logistics.” This is already different from what he experienced with Rey in several ways. Potentially this means he’s done something unwise. 

Hux slumps back against the wall and studies Ren, his hand still resting protectively over his cracked rib. 

“I think they’re nearly done with this game,” Hux says. His eyes change, fear showing. “They are not a patient people. I’m getting the sense it’s not going to be long before they finish me off.” 

“Quit your crying, I’m working as hard as I can.” 

“I’m not--” Hux glowers. It’s a relief. Ren only ever wants that look from him. Not the defeated one, not even the begging, wet-eyed thing from Snoke’s throne room. “Well, why don’t you get to it, then,” Hux says. 

He pitches Ren out of his mind like he’s spent years honing the practice of doing so, and Ren supposes he has.

Back in his room, alone again in his mind and body, Ren feels energized. It’s the relief of being separated from Hux’s pain and predicament. He again considers leaving Hux there, being rid of him at last. Then he sees the fifteen new messages from officers in ten different departments, waiting for him like snipers on the personal comm console in his quarters, one of the few things he didn’t smash after watching that first holo of Hux being tortured.

Only Hux will do, for now. Ren can find someone similarly qualified later. Surely such a person exists in the Order’s ranks somewhere. Until then he’s got his clues: algae smell, vibrations from a track overhead. He meditates upon them, sliding into it with surprising ease. The mission to reclaim Hux is the closest thing he’s had to achievable objective since Skywalker tricked him. Hux is like a point of light in the distance, nothing so grand as the location of the rebels or the key to projecting himself there against Rey’s attempts to keep him away, but it’s something. It’s useful, like a halo lamp in a swamp. It’s a way forward, and Ren chases it through the dark as mistful impressions sharpen around him, whispering answers. 

The name of the planet comes to him like something that was always there, just shoved into a forgotten drawer: Bjsk. He can’t pronounce it in the approximate Basic and doesn’t care. He knows its location at last, can feel it in his gut like a fish hook pulling him forward. He springs up and races to the bridge to give orders, realizing only halfway there that he left his room in his socks after removing his boots to meditate. 

He pauses in the hallway, considers going back to make himself presentable. A pair of stormtroopers halt and stare at him uncertainly, as if he might have some task for them. There’s no time to waste, so he continues on to the bridge. Vanity hasn’t served him well thus far anyway.

 

**

He leads the rescue mission personally, because this has become personal to him. Katalon is the first planet to defy the Order since Snoke’s death. Possibly word has gotten around that there is a new, young leader, that he failed in some respect on Crait, that his mother is the leader of the loathsome Resistance. All information that might lend a daring faction to oppose him. Ren will show them, himself, why they should not have. 

He’s disappointed upon arrival: there are only two Katalonians guarding Hux’s cell. Ren slaughters them when they rush him, thinking there will be more, a whole squadron rounding the corner at any moment and a cabal of leadership stashed away up ahead, but the derelict mining facility where they are headquartered seems abandoned. The only lifeform Ren senses as he moves through its algae-coated hallways is Hux. 

The cell is just as Ren saw it in the visions, and Hux is much the same himself. He’s turned toward the cell door at the sound of the commotion outside, struggling to prop himself up on one trembling arm. When he sees Ren he struggles harder, trying to rise. 

“Where are the others?” Ren asks, stomping into the cell. 

“I-- Might ask you the same.” Hux coughs uncomfortably and peers around Ren, at the hallway and the dead guards. “You came, you’re-- Alone?” 

“Troopers are waiting with the transport. I could have handled more of them myself.” Ren shuts off his lightsaber, shoulders sinking. “There were only two?”

“The others must have left.” 

Hux is still trying to stand, slowly. Ren watches his efforts until too much time has been wasted on Hux’s pride. He hurries forward to help Hux get to his feet, irritated by Hux’s feebleness and trying to ignore the sense that he’s still connected to it even now that he’s here in physical form. Hux shrinks away from him with instinctual terror, stumbling against the wall and sinking back down toward the floor. 

“Idiot,” Ren says, softly. He feels like he’s speaking to himself, maybe because of the now viciously surging connection he created to find Hux here. He catches Hux before his ass can hit the ground, tucks his arm around Hux’s back and helps him stagger forward. “I didn’t come here to--” 

“Careful of the arm!” Hux shouts, bitter and ungrateful even as he slumps against Ren’s side and allows Ren to support his unsteady gait. “I dislocated my shoulder.” 

“Just hurry up.” 

Ren feels every sharp twinge of pain the shoulder injury sends into Hux as they move, and so much queasy relief and embarrassment wafting off of Hux that he wants to sever their connection immediately. He’s not entirely sure how to do that, however. Previously it was only done to him against his will. 

“Something’s wrong,” Hux says. 

“Are more Katalonians coming?” Ren asks, hopefully. It’s been too long since he had victory in battle on a personal level. The memory of fighting Snoke’s guards with the girl was so briefly glorious, so quickly ruined. 

“It’s not that,” Hux says. He jerks in Ren’s arms like he wants to stand on his own, but they don’t have time for him to limp pathetically all the way out of this facility, which is vast. “It’s you,” Hux says, giving Ren an accusing stare. “You’re--” 

Hux can’t come up with a word for the uncomfortable weight of their lingering connection. He doesn’t have the language for discussions of the Force, or the imagination for that matter. Ren ignores him and tugs him forward, adjusting his grip when Hux shouts in pain. Ren wouldn’t care except that it hurts him, too, though not so much that he’s going to scream about it like a child. 

Aboard the shuttle, Ren tries to hold himself away from an over-awareness of Hux’s every thought and injury. Hux is fuming, as if it annoys him above all that Ren was the one to rescue him. He’s still mad about the miscalculation with the convoy to Katalon, too. Also very hungry, taking tentative sips from a thermos of water the medic droid on board has given him: a medic droid that Ren ordered aboard when they left the _Finalizer_ , but Hux isn’t grateful for that either. Ren grits his teeth and tries to think about anything but Hux. For the past five cycles the miserable bastard has consumed his mind almost entirely. 

It’s a relief to separate when they’re back on the _Finalizer_ , Hux off to med bay and Ren to the bridge to oversee the full scale attack of Katalon. They’ve been shelling the major cities for days, but Ren didn’t want to annihilate the planet’s surface until he was certain Hux wasn’t underground somewhere. 

Watching destruction rain down from the safety of a command bridge has never been his preferred method of battle, and after Skywalker’s stunt it’s almost painful. The memory of watching the smoke clear only to see his former master standing there unscathed makes him sneer at the holo screens that show the cities of Katalon crumbling. Ren should have known. Especially since the appearance of Rey had put Force projection on his mind already. He couldn’t think, that day. He was pure, unseeing rage. Allowing himself to transform into such had served him before. The destruction of Skywalker’s school was the first time it fully overtook him. He knew the truth of himself that night, and basked in it, collecting loyalists and slaughtering the rest. 

He can’t remember the last time he collected anything resembling a loyalist. He’s reached out to his scattered Knights through the Force since Snoke’s death. Their responses have been so lukewarm that he’s hesitated to order them to assemble before him. 

“Sir?”

Another fucking officer barking in his ear, interrupting his thoughts. 

“What.” 

“The scorched earth campaign is completed to satisfaction in my view, Supreme Leader. Your counsel, please, on our efforts thus far? Shall we pull back now?” 

“No. Fire on the ashes. The whole galaxy is watching, seeing what happens when we are refused.” 

“We are--” The officer hesitates to say the rest. He’s the same one who was on the command shuttle that day, on Crait. He has a name, Ren supposes. It’s irrelevant. “We’re somewhat short on ammunition, sir,” he says. “After this and our previous, ah. Expenditure.” 

He’s talking about the arsenal unleashed on Skywalker, when Ren couldn’t even object to Hux’s insolent refusal to use more after a certain point. 

“The General will secure funds for more ammo.” Ren has been unable to liquidate or even really locate the source of Snoke’s wealth. Now that Hux is back, Ren can resume haranguing him about this daily. “Do as I say and do not question me again on this bridge, Commander.”

He’s not even sure that’s the man’s correct rank, but he’s sure that he will comply. Ren is not opposed to snapping the neck of any officer who means less to him than Hux, should they dare to undermine him in front of the others. The Commander, or whatever he is, should take note of Ren’s interest in setting examples.

 

**

They jump to lightspeed and blast away from Katalon when it’s a smouldering husk. Several officers try to bring Ren reports about how the attack is being reported across the galaxy, through First Order propaganda and otherwise, thinking Ren wants to hear this. As if he needs proof that he was right about how the galaxy would react. 

“No one is to disturb me until I emerge from my quarters,” Ren says, interrupting one of these officers in mid-report. She stops short and nods. “I mean it.” Ren holds a finger in her face. To her credit, she doesn’t flinch or even blink. “What’s your name?” 

“I’m Captain Ovid, sir.” 

“You’re personally responsible for keeping me from being interrupted, Captain Ovid. There will be consequences if you fail.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

Ren turns for his door and reaches for the entry panel. He rests his finger just over it, not wanting to open it and have her get a glimpse of the disaster he’s made of his rooms. 

“Has the General returned to duty?” he asks, muttering this from over his shoulder. 

“Hux, sir?”

“Yes, the General!” Ren supposes there are others, but she should have known what he meant.

“I would have to check with medbay, sir. I believe he’s returned to his rooms, at present.” 

Ren grunts. “Fine. Doesn’t matter. You’re dismissed, leave me.” 

As soon as he’s alone again he feels lost. It’s different from his sense of floating isolation in the immediate wake of Skywalker’s stunt and the escape of the last of the Resistance in Solo’s old junker. Just the thought of that insult added to his biggest injury makes him kick a broken mug against the opposite wall, shattering it. 

Destroying something offers only the briefest reprieve from his new sense of untethered confusion. It creeps back in and hovers around him when he stretches out on his back in bed, knowing that sleep won’t come. He feels antsy, keyed-up, and like he’s ignoring some pressing concern. Flashes of Hux reach him when he shuts his eyes: Hux drinking two swallows of some strong spirit before lifting his shirt to give himself a sleep stim injection, Hux stumbling into his bed in his underwear. 

“No,” Ren says aloud, smashing his eyes shut like he can chase these impressions away if he closes them harder, with more determination. The fact that Hux can’t seem to see him in a similar fashion is a cold comfort. Of course he can’t. He’s not a Force user. This is a one-way road to hell for Ren’s sanity, and he’s going to end it. He tries meditating, but meditation dumps him even more firmly into the visions of Hux. 

It’s as if he’s corrupted the process of meditation entirely, having used it to find Hux and now stuck with always finding him, ceaselessly returning to this awful awareness of Hux’s every ache and yawn. He sees Hux dragging his comm into bed and trying to read it, sees him failing to keep his eyes open and finally passing out with his face pressed to the mattress and the blankets half-thrown over his bare legs. When the impulse to sleep settles heavily over Ren, as if his body wants to follow Hux’s down into the stim-clouded dark, he jerks out of bed with alarm. 

This can’t go on: he’ll end it now. He’ll do it while Hux sleeps, if he can. It will be easier that way, without Hux’s obnoxious objections and questions. 

On the way to Hux’s rooms, he tries not to think about the fact that he has no idea what one does to sever a bothersome Force link that’s no longer useful. He tries not to imagine Snoke’s bitter laughter or think about how much he would enjoy this predicament: Ren having fucked something up already, unable to go to Snoke for counsel. 

Getting into Hux’s quarters is easy. He’s never been able to keep Ren out. Ren has been here a handful of times. It looks the same as it ever has: sparsely furnished and cold, with fussy accents here and there. The bar on his recessed shelves is lighted, those lights now dimmed to five or six percent. Ren made fun of Hux for this indulgence last time he was here, when he crashed in unannounced to initiate a shouting match about some inconvenience. Hux likes to drink. Ren finds it a reprehensible weakness, something Han Solo also enjoyed.

Hux has left the lights up around twenty percent in his bedroom. He’s still in the same position Ren saw in his vision: face down and splayed out with surprising sloppiness, maybe to accommodate for his recently healed rib and realigned shoulder. He’s wearing a loose shirt with long sleeves over his underwear, mercifully. Something about the way its wide collar almost hangs down over Hux’s healed left shoulder offends Ren as much as anything else about what’s going on here. Perhaps this is considered fetching on that shithole Arkanis.

“Hux,” Ren says, just as a test. He knows the stim will keep Hux under for hours. Hux stims himself to sleep more often than not. Another dangerous weakness. Ren can’t believe no one has exploited this yet, though he does admire the security system Hux uses for his quarters and how it allows him to feel reasonably safe here. Ren has tried foiling it in more traditional ways, just to see if it’s possible, but has given up and used the Force every time. 

Ren drags Hux’s desk chair over toward the bed. Of course he keeps a desk and a full comm station in his bedroom, in addition to the one in his personal office. There’s probably all manner of shocking filth scraped off the holonet on that thing. 

Already Ren is having trouble concentrating, quashing again and again this grotesque curiosity about Hux that the Force link is engendering within him. It was much the same with the girl, according to Snoke’s design: she became a fascination, a point of light that Ren kept crashing into like an idiot moth. A connection to Hux is less dangerous in the sense that Hux has no powers of his own, but there are likely other complications, and Ren doesn’t want to discover them. He’ll end this himself, right now. He’s just got to focus, and to fight off the urge to sleep that is trying to overtake him even here, sitting in a chair across from Hux’s bed and watching him rest with some measure of envy. Ren’s sleep has not been good since that night when he woke up with Skywalker’s lightsaber glowing over him, and it’s been worse than ever in recent days. 

His mind is uncooperative, sluggish with exhaustion and demanding rest. He fights it, determined not to suffer another moment of this torment, but in all of his efforts to sever their connection he comes back to his feelings about Hux, which intensify the link instead. His feelings are all negative, even those of the curious nature, but because of this he can’t make himself indifferent, which might be a start. He’s never been able to make himself feel the things he should, or those that would serve him. 

He’s slumped in the chair after an interminable time spent studying Hux and sneering at him, hating this. His eyelids are heavy. He hates his physical body more than ever. That Skywalker could escape his long enough to spoil everything was more salt in all the old wounds. 

He drops into sleep despite all his efforts. It’s Hux’s fault. That’s his last thought before completely slipping under, which does not bode well for dreams. 

Ren has never liked dreaming. He first met Snoke in a dream. 

For some immeasurable amount of time outside of time he truly rests. It’s so unusual to him now that he can feel it happening from a distant perch that’s almost conscious. He’s threaded unevenly into Hux’s stim-laced sleep, like he’s leaching from it, and he enjoys the sensation when Hux tosses and turns, likewise absorbing Ren’s tendency to fight bitterly against any attempt at rest. At some point there’s a moan from Hux that wakes Ren, only he isn’t really awake.

It’s more like Hux has called him to some horrid place where Ren doesn’t want to be. It’s dark and cold and enormous, and Hux stands before him in full uniform, hatless. Hux looks terrified. He grabs his throat and begins to sink into the glossy black surface they’re both standing upon, which has transformed into a sucking, inky morass under Hux’s boots. 

“Ren,” Hux says, barely able to speak for the pressure around his throat. Ren isn’t doing it. He’s not doing any of this, only watching passively as Hux sinks lower and lower, struggling to pull his collar away from his throat as if that’s what’s choking him. His eyes bug out, fill with tears. It’s not unlike that moment in the aftermath when Ren didn’t care about anything but crushing everyone in his path, when he violently rejected the ability to even care if Rey lived or died. 

Hux sinks deeper into the void that’s consuming him, disappearing up to his knees. 

Ren realizes he’s freezing, shaking, standing inside some icy cave as he watches Hux reach now not for his throat but for him, with both hands.

 _Please_ , Hux tries to say, losing his voice. Tears pour down his cheeks. Ren feels nothing, watching.

He doesn’t like this nothing feeling. It’s like someone has erased him. And they can’t have Hux, down there in the black morass he’s being sucked into. Hux belongs to Ren. He’s needed here. 

Ren gets on his knees, just at the edge of the thing that’s pulling Hux away from him. He reaches out with both hands. He’s got his gloves on. Hux’s hands are bare, desperate, clutching at Ren’s. He’s in up to to his chest now, and when Ren tries to pull him out, the thing down there pulls, too, yanking Hux in deeper.

“No!” Hux says, except actually he doesn’t. It was Ren who screamed that, and he grits his teeth once it’s out, braces himself on everything solid and rips Hux up out of the darkness, into his arms.  

They stumble backward together. The stuff in the dark pool doesn’t coat Hux’s clothes; it’s all left behind, hissing and bubbling as they move away from it. Ren has both arms around Hux, who clings to him, looking back over his shoulder at the darkness he nearly disappeared into. 

Hux is warm, Ren notices. So much warmer than the frigid air in this exitless cave, especially when he cries out in relief and presses his hot face to Ren’s throat. 

“I didn’t throw you in there,” Ren says. “That wasn’t me.” 

_But you did_.

“No, but. That was something else--” 

_Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, Ren, Ren, Ren, you saved me, you came for me, Ren--_

“Stop.” Ren puts his hand on the back of Hux’s head. It seems a good enough way to shut him up. “I needed you. We do, I mean, the Order--”

_Ren, Ren, Ren, Ren--_

Hux isn’t saying his name, but he’s thinking it very loudly, and every _Ren_ that forms in his mind is like a different exaltation. Ren holds him, listening.

“You’re mine,” Ren says, though he knows from experience that it’s a very bad business, making vows in dreams. “So quit crying.” 

“I’m not crying,” Hux says, his lips moving on Ren’s skin in a way that’s much too real, warm and wet and jarring enough to wake him.

Ren almost falls out of the chair. It slides backward across the floor when he jerks awake, his feet scrambling for purchase. Hux is awake, too, sitting up in bed with his hands hugged around his elbows, the blankets pulled over his bare legs now. He’s staring at Ren, eyes wide.

“Supreme Leader,” Hux says, slow and careful. He’s terrified; it’s in the air like frost. Ren can feel Hux’s heartbeat like a frantic little drum that’s pounding inside Ren’s ear. “Why are you in my room.” 

“They fixed your eye,” Ren says. His heart is slamming, too, and he’s grabbed both arms of the chair for traction. 

“Bacta does wonders for swelling and bruises,” Hux says. He’s thinking about his blaster. In his stim-laced stupor he left it out of reach. He’s thinking Ren would certainly kill him as soon as he lunged for the bedstand where the blaster waits, useless to him at this distance. 

“I came to check on you,” Ren says. He sits up straighter, realizing as he does that he feels well-rested, despite an ache in his neck from sleeping upright. “What’s your condition?”

“My condition.”

“Yes. You look-- Healed.” There’s a soap and aftershave smell in the air, coming through the open doorway of the attached fresher. “And washed.” 

Hux’s eyebrows shoot up. “I’m perfectly fine,” he says, and then, very tightly: “Thank you. Sir.”

“Did they fix your finger?”

“My finger?” Hux’s fright is mellowing toward annoyance, but there’s still a lot of fear in his energy, swirling into Ren in an uncomfortable way.

“They broke it, in the holo they sent.” 

“Oh. Yes.” Hux lifts his left hand in a kind of surrendering gesture, curls his index finger and then straightens it. “See, good as new. You watched those, did you? The holos they took?”

“Yes. As part of my investigation into your whereabouts. How about the rest of you?” 

“The rest of me?” Hux seems offended by the question already, posture straightening. 

“Your mental state. You were tortured for-- What was it? Five cycles?” Ren knows it was five cycles. Hux seems to understand this and doesn’t answer, unimpressed by Ren’s attempt at indifference. “I thought you might be compromised,” Ren says, sharply. “Tender, in the aftermath. In need of leave.” 

“You did not.” Hux glares at him. “Obviously I’m fine to return to my command post--”

“Are you.”

“Yes! Do you really not know the first thing about me, mind-reading powers and all? About seventy percent of my childhood involved being beaten in windowless rooms, so, yes. I’m completely fit for duty, as always. Did you not see me taking every blow Snoke dealt without missing a step, all those years?”

Not to mention yours, he doesn’t say. In more recent days. 

“Your father,” Ren says, disliking the dawning of this information and what Hux is saying generally. What Hux is feeling, transmitted through their connection, is worse. It’s accusation, and it’s guilt, but that’s coming from Ren, mixing uneasily with Hux’s fury, which has probably never been righteous before this moment. Hux doesn’t seem to be enjoying the phenomenon.

“Yes, my father,” Hux says, spitting this at Ren with no pretense of respect after giving him a long, hard stare. “He was my crash course in getting up off the floor after being thrown onto it. Are you really here in the middle of my rest cycle to speak to me about him?”  

“No.” Ren stands from the chair, trying to shake off-- Something. Pity. Self-pity, probably, absorbed from Hux. “There are several things you should be aware of. Issues that need to be addressed promptly, seeing as you’re so fit to return to work right away.” 

“I am indeed. And these matters are so urgent that you had to break into my rooms and fall asleep in my chair rather than rousing me from bed?”

“I--”

“Tell me at once. They were too gentle with me in medbay, I should have been informed while they treated my injuries.” 

Ren doesn’t like being interrupted, and this feels too much like Hux giving him an order. He’s disoriented enough already by having gotten himself into this situation, wondering why he thought he would be able to just walk in here, snip their Force connection and recapture the serenity of not feeling sorry for Hux, among other things. 

“A fuel supplier wants to see you immediately,” Ren says. “They’ve been asking for you, we’ve been stalling.” 

“Which one?” Hux throws away his blankets, revealing his long, pale legs. He’s up in a flash, rushing to his dressing cabinet. 

“The main one, uh--” Ren forgets the name. It wasn’t important at the time.

“Klipton Corp? Oh, fuck! You left _them_ on hold for five cycles? What were you thinking?”

“That it was best not to disclose the matter of your abduction to any vendor who asked to speak to you.” 

“They’re not just any vendor, and do you even realize how much fuel we burned on your little misadventure, not to mention the stores that were lost on the _Supremacy_ \--” 

Hux realizes how insolent he’s being and stops talking, turned away from Ren as he dresses. The fear creeps back in, sliding across the back of Hux’s neck as he feels Ren watching him and wonders if he’s earned another reminder of his new place on his knees at Ren’s feet. There’s something else, too, a curiosity about why Ren watched him sleeping. Hux turns halfway toward him and gives him a cautious look that’s not quite deferential, more afraid. 

“Supreme Leader,” Hux says, modulating his tone. His hands are shaking as he does up the clasps on his uniform tunic. “Permission to make contact with Klipton Corp at once and make my most sincere apologies for the delay. We ought not to spoil our relationship with them, especially now. That’s my-- Advice. Sir.” 

“Fine.” Ren waves his hand toward the door. “Go. Do whatever is necessary.” 

Ren feels an enormous weight lifting off his shoulders. Hux is back. He’ll see to things like this, and Ren won’t send him out as an envoy again without ten squadrons marching behind him and Ren’s shuttle providing air cover. 

“What else?” Hux asks. He’s doing his cuffs. Ren stares, enjoying the sight of Hux rebecoming himself. This is the Hux that Ren needs. 

“There was a minor flood on one of the decks,” Ren says, feeling tired again, or hypnotized. 

“Naturally you’ve forgotten which one. Never mind, I’ll call an emergency meeting with my senior officers. You’re obviously welcome to attend.” 

“No.”

“I thought not. Was there anything else?”

Ren considers mentioning the troublesome Force link and his forthcoming efforts to sever it. Hux mentioned something feeling wrong as they were leaving the facility where he was held. He may have noticed other things since then. As dead to the Force as Hux’s energy tends to be, he must feel something, too. 

“Did you have any dreams just now?” Ren asks. 

Hux laughs at the question, then looks concerned when he sees Ren is serious. 

“No,” he says. “I never dream. Stims preclude it.”

“You should learn to sleep without stims. Makes you very vulnerable to attack.” 

“If you’re done threatening me, you can go.” Again, Hux freezes, catching himself too late after falling back into old habits. He doesn’t dare meet Ren’s eyes after that insolence. “That is. Thank you for the report, Supreme Leader. And the advice, ah. About stims. Wise words.”

“Shut up,” Ren says, amused. “Don’t insult my intelligence by pretending to respect me.” 

“I do respect you.” Hux meets Ren’s eyes then, unguarded anger on his face. “I respect what you can do. That which I cannot.” 

That’s fear, Ren thinks. Not respect. He doesn’t need to say it out loud: Hux knows.  

Ren leaves the room while Hux is doing up his boots. Out in the hallway, Ren pauses and grits his teeth, trying to tug his mind away from his persisting over-awareness of Hux’s whereabouts. He’ll make a study of it, won’t rest until he figures out how to undo this. He can’t live like this, and he’s not about to let Hux be the end of him after all. 

 

**

The problem is: there’s nothing to study. Snoke’s secrets died with him, and he was always more eager to instruct Ren in the ways of combat as opposed to the seeking of information and insight through the Force. Ren understands why now, but that understanding doesn’t help him with the problem at hand. He can’t even search through Snoke’s private quarters for artifacts that might provide illumination, as everything Snoke kept close at hand disappeared with the rest of the _Supremacy_. 

Meditation is no longer a resource. It leads him straight to Hux. If he even takes a moment for simple contemplation a flash of Hux will appear at the edge of his consciousness like an itch: Hux negotiating with the fuel supplier, Hux marching across the bridge with that stick up his ass posture, Hux burning his tongue on hot tea, Hux jerking himself off with mechanical detachment in the shower. Ren is at least free from an awareness of Hux’s thoughts unless they’re in the same room together, so he steers clear of Hux whenever possible. 

This is not easy, as of all the officers who pester him about administrative bullshit, Hux is actually the worst. While Hux at least actually handles these things himself, he feels the need to keep Ren in the loop to an obsessive degree, sending memos and requesting meetings. Ren rejects all of these requests, but Hux is a rabid dog who won’t leave him in peace for long. Ren has the advantage of knowing Hux’s location and therefore how to avoid him, but exhaustion gets the best of him before too long, and at the start of the third cycle since Hux’s return, Ren is still half asleep as he dresses and heads for his door, needing to get to the rec mats to train for all battles forthcoming. He’s thinking of his Knights when he steps out into the hallway, at last not thinking of Hux, and that is how Hux manages to surprise him. He’s standing right outside Ren’s quarters, scowling. 

“Supreme Leader,” Hux says. “I have a concern.” 

“Comm it to me, I’m busy.” 

“I have been comming you, sir, specifically about the need of a meeting between the two of us--”

“I can’t drop everything to serve your whims, General. Take my lack of a response as an indication that I’ve got more important business elsewhere.” 

“Ren, what’s happening?”

Ren stops in his tracks and takes a deep breath. Hux is behind him, hovering. 

“Happening in what sense,” Ren mutters, though he can guess. Half of his flashes of Hux-vision have featured Hux pausing in whatever he’s doing and looking around as if he’s afraid he’s being watched. 

“Since your successful effort to find me with the Force, I feel something remains amiss. You mentioned a connection, and I feel-- Something. Something like that, a presence. Yours, to be exact. Even when I’m alone. Am I wrong?”

Ren turns to look at Hux. He’s fresh-faced since his return, and he wasn’t lying about the time spent in captivity not having fazed him. He’s built for torture, apparently. 

“We need privacy for this discussion,” Ren says, stepping closer. Hux flinches, which makes no sense. He can withstand torture with a spring in his step, but he’s still jumpy in Ren’s presence after one choking incident? Perhaps he thought Ren would kill him, but he thought the Katalonians would, too, or so he said. “Let’s go to your quarters,” Ren says. His are still trashed, and the last person he wants finding out about that is Hux, who will assume that the trashing had something to do with his disappearance and might therefore have ideas.

Possibly he already has some ideas. He’s pleased by Ren’s attention. Disturbingly so.

“Yes, excellent,” Hux says. “Thank you, sir. I look forward to having this sorted.” 

I’ll bet, Ren thinks. He follows behind Hux all the way to his quarters, refusing to walk at his side. There’s still a spike of fear in Hux’s mind, but mostly he’s feeling victorious. Ren files that away. Surely Hux is scheming already, planning how best to use this miscalculation of Ren’s to his advantage. As if a one-way window into Hux’s every action isn’t going to work purely in Ren’s advantage, even if it drives him mad in the meantime. 

“Would you like to sit?” Hux asks when they’re in his quarters, Hux strolling casually into the main room with the sofa and the recessed bar. “Something to drink?” 

“No.” Ren stands near the doorway. This isn’t a social call, and he’s seen plenty of Hux’s quarters through the visions over the last three cycles. “You’re right that something needs to be done about the lingering connection,” he says. “I’m working on it.” 

“Oh?” Hux turns away from the bar and back toward Ren, squaring his shoulders under that stupid coat. “Can I assist?” 

Ren sighs. He sort of knew it would come to this. “Yes.” 

“Excellent, what do you need from me? I’m eager to have this done with myself, it’s making me feel, you know. Somewhat uneasy.”

Hux is lying, which is weird. He likes the attention. Why, then, was he so eager for this meeting?

Ren reminds himself that Hux can’t possibly outsmart him. Ren can see into Hux’s mind. 

However: this is more or less the same mistake Snoke made with Ren. Considering this, his resolve to do what must be done to sever their connection increases tenfold.

“You’re the one holding on to your end of the connection,” Ren says. He tries not to make this sound accusing, wanting Hux to be compliant. 

Hux frowns. “I assure you, I’m not.”

“Not intentionally, but you’re doing it. You feel a sense of indebtedness to me.” It’s deeper than that, but Ren doesn’t want to look any closer than he already has at what Hux feels for him. 

“Indebtedness,” Hux says, deadpan. 

“Yes. I saved you from the kidnappers, and I used this connection to do it. So you’re clinging to it now. Without meaning to. It’s just instinct.”

“Right.” Hux’s nose twitches. He thinks Ren is wrong. As if Hux knows more about how the Force works. “Well, by all means. Instruct me in how I can stop-- _Clinging_ , as you say.”  

“You don’t have to do anything,” Ren says, annoyed by the presumption that Hux will be the active party in this solution. “It’s me who has to do something, to end it.” 

“And what’s that.”

“I have to hurt you.”

Hux blanches, not in his face so much as down through his chest: it’s ice, like the ice that cracked in Ren when he thought for half a breath that Hux was dead. 

Hux recovers quickly, leveling a hateful look at Ren and thinking he should have known. 

“Fine,” Hux says. “Not in any permanently debilitating way, I should hope?” 

“No. I’ll just choke you, like before.”

Again, that ice spreads through Hux, then an angry fire that quickly melts it all away. 

“Right,” Hux says, tightly. Hating Ren anew already.

So that’s a good start.

Ren moves toward him. Hux shrinks only a little, his shoulders pressing back. 

“Sorry,” Ren says, and he means it. He really thinks this will work, has for almost a full cycle now, and he’s been avoiding it because he doesn’t want to do it. He’s not sure why, but he suspects it’s the connection. He’s too attuned to Hux’s feelings and fears to want to hurt him now. “We have to break the bond this way,” he says, resigned. “I won’t leave bruises.” 

“Use your hand,” Hux blurts. He swallows, and Ren feels it going down hard, whatever he’s trying to suppress. “Please. It unnerves me, is all. Being knocked around by the Force.”

All the more reason to use the Force and therefore break the bond, but Ren nods in agreement. He reaches for Hux’s neck, and freezes in mid-reach when Hux’s shoulders jerk. 

“Just do it,” Hux snaps, embarrassed by his dread of this. He particularly dislikes this attack, as Snoke never did it to him. Only Ren ever has. “I, I’ll-- I can take it. As you know.” 

Hux meets Ren’s eyes, showing him rage and other things, too. There’s resignation, and a broken thing in him that never healed. 

Hux steps forward and tilts his chin up, watching Ren from beneath his fluttering eyelids. He lowers his shoulders, sticks out his chest a bit. Offering himself. 

Ren feels-- Something. He ignores it and puts his hand on Hux’s bared throat. Gently, for now.

Between Ren’s spread fingers, Hux swallows. His pulse is pounding. Ren considers asking him to close his eyes. 

“Okay,” Ren says, to himself. “Going to start now.”

“Please do,” Hux says, teeth grit. 

Ren flexes his fingers. He shouldn’t have agreed to do this with his hand. 

Hux is trembling but trying to put on a brave face. Ren is still hesitating, and the connection surges in response to his empathy. He can feel not just Hux’s basic animal fear but the deep, winding threads of it that go all the way to the core of him: the way Hux’s father hurt him, saying _this is for your own good, weakling_ , that horror spiralling sidelong into the way Ren has hurt Hux, all of it pooling like melted ice into the humiliation that flows through Hux almost constantly at the memory of so many people watching him be flattened by someone stronger and doing nothing to help him, because they believed he deserved it, as he deserves it now--

“Stop it!” Ren says, removing his hand. He didn’t even manage to pinch Hux’s throat. 

Hux exhales, his shoulders slumping with relief already. “Stop what?” 

“Your-- Fear! This is necessary.”

“And I’m prepared for it! Sorry I’m not as cheerful as you’d like about being choked, but just get on with it.” 

Ren tries again. Hux is now flooded with a kind of bitter disappointment that seeps into Ren, too: of course, of course. It will always come to this, for Hux. Back to this in time. 

Again, Ren can’t do it. He walks across the room and punches the wall instead. The bottles on Hux’s bar shelves rattle together. Ren waits for Hux to taunt him for this failure, but he’s silent, of course. He’s not going to spur Ren into action with insults now.

“There is another thing you could do,” Hux says, adjusting his collar when Ren turns to look at him. Hux is flushed with relief, but it’s cautious and he’s growing anxious about something else. “It would be a way to, ah. Perhaps not hurt me, but act upon me aggressively. In a sense.” 

“What.” 

“Sex. Fucking me. You could do that, unless that disgusts you even more.” 

Ren wants to ask, are you insane? It seems too cruel a question for someone who was just tortured for days and was unmoved by it because of so much previous torture. 

Of course Hux is insane. Ren knew that before he knew why.

“That makes no sense,” Ren says instead, just as he’s beginning to think, shit: it does.

“Mhm, if you say so. It’s an experiment I’m willing to try, regardless.” Hux is radiating something that Ren doesn’t want to understand. It’s a long-held, punishing desire, sticky with the residue of hatred and distrust but strong nonetheless. “But it’s your decision, of course,” he says. “Supreme Leader.” 

He pronounces Ren’s title so intentionally. This is certainly part of some plot. Ren stalks toward him, not sure what he means to do when he gets there.

The closer he gets to Hux the more he understands that Hux has wanted an excuse to ask for this for some time, and that the long, winding spiral of hurt connected to that Force choking in the throne room and moreso the way Ren pitched Hux aside in front of his officers is knotted into this resentful want in places, because of course he’s nothing to Ren, nobody, an afterthought--

Ren seethes. _You’re nothing, nobody_. He drove the girl away with those words. But no-- She was never going to stand at his side, whatever he said.

Hux, however. 

“Take off your clothes.” 

Hux gives no outward indication of his surprise in Ren’s acquiescence, but that’s a facade. He’s so eager and overcome he can barely make his fingers work on the clasps down the front of his uniform tunic. The greatcoat is shrugged away like a skin that must be shed, its absence already leaving Hux looking half the size he tries to appear to be. Ren remains fixed on Hux’s thoughts, aware that this is certainly a strategic move on his part, in addition to whatever Hux’s authentic interest in getting fucked by him represents. Hux is thinking about the coat on the floor, disliking that it’s rumpled there but unwilling to pause for anything as he pulls off his clothes. He’s avoiding Ren’s eyes, mouth pulled into a prim line as he drops his tunic to the floor, then his undershirt. 

Hux is soft and lithe at the same time. Narrow shoulders, skinny chest. Ren knew all this without needing to see so Hux so exposed, delicate pink nipples peaking into points against the cold air in the room. He’s seen Hux in a pitiful state plenty of times, but never bare like this, unguarded. Even when their connection offered him an unwanted glimpse of Hux’s sad jerk off routine in the shower, it didn’t seem so starkly intimate as this. Ren stands back, staring, and watches Hux work on his breeches. 

Hux finishes undressing. He removes his socks last, even after he’s pulled off his underwear. He stands shivering in the middle of the cold room, his energy like that of a meal served on a platter: tempting, helplessly awaiting consumption. His cock is soft and kind of small, which Ren finds amusing. His ass is the same: soft, small. 

Ren says nothing as he circles Hux, observant. Tenderness is foreign to him, and sexual attraction resides in a locked container he’s kept in an untended room for many years. At the core of him there’s always been an interest in both men and women, but even the girl’s beauty barely reached him when he was focused on securing her power as an ally against Skywalker. Now a sleeping thing stirs in that long neglected room, heat sinking low in his gut as it awakens. He continues walking in slow, close circles around Hux, enjoying Hux’s impatient uncertainty about where to put his hands. Presently they are pressed flat against his thighs as if he’s submitting to a military inspection. 

Ren removes his gloves. Hux watches him do so, lips just barely parted. An inspection seems an appropriate start, Ren thinks. 

“How’s the rib?” Ren asks. He tosses the gloves away and places his bare hand on Hux’s chest before he can respond, gripping him gently over the injured spot.

“I-- It’s fine.” Hux is a mess already. Predictable. He stares down at Ren’s thumb when it moves just lightly over his skin, drawing a shudder out of Hux and causing his mouth open a bit wider.

“And this?” Ren reaches up to touch Hux’s shoulder with his other hand, still holding his chest with just enough pressure to not exactly threaten, not exactly soothe.

“Fine,” Hux says, pushing this out in a shaky breath. He’s getting hard just from this. 

“You’re surprisingly durable,” Ren says. It’s not true, but if he flatters and coddles Hux he can turn whatever game Hux is playing on its head easily enough. The desperation for contact and praise that’s coming off Hux is unmistakable and profound, not something he could be faking for a ploy.  

“Thank you,” Hux says. He shifts under Ren’s hands, pressing shyly into his touch. “Sir,” he adds, and there’s his sad attempt at manipulation again: he looks up into Ren’s eyes with doe-eyed phony adoration. 

Ren wants to laugh and ask Hux how many gullible senior officers he blew through while perfecting this routine, but he puts that aside, saves it for later.

“And your cheek,” Ren says, lifting his hand from Hux’s shoulder to cup the left side of Hux’s face, where he had that ghastly bruise in captivity. “Was the bone damaged?” Ren asks. He moves just a breath closer to Hux and pretends to examine his cheek carefully, his thumb stroking over the high point.

“I’m all right,” Hux pushes out. As if he didn’t really hear the question. 

“Are you.”

“Yes.”

“Sir.”

“Yes--, yes, sir.” 

“You should call me that, during this. To increase your resentment of me and therefore uncouple the connection.” 

“Mhm.” Hux nods, swallows. He seems to want to say something but decides against it. 

Ren lingers in Hux’s space long enough for Hux to wonder wildly if he’s going to be kissed. He looks like he’s afraid it might happen even as he stays perfectly still in case it does, his breath quick and shallow. Ren smirks and steps away, folding his arms over his chest.

“Get on your knees,” he says, because Hux won’t buy this merciful act once his head clears and he reflects upon the encounter. 

Hux seems confused by the command, but only for a half a second. Then real resentment passes over his face and into his energy, and he lowers to the floor in front of Ren. He stays straight-backed once he’s on his knees, and doesn’t sink down to fold his legs. 

Ren takes a moment to consult Hux’s desires before continuing. Hux has had fantasies like this, specifically about Ren ordering him to his knees, but that was before Ren had the power to actually do so. Hux’s thoughts are confused, overlapping and crashing against each other like angry waves breaking. He has mixed feelings about the reality of being on his knees before Ren. His cock, however, is fully engaged. 

Ren has never actually done anything with another person beyond that fumbling in Jedi school that was uncoordinated and unplanned and ultimately one of his greatest personal failures. He wants to impress Hux, which is not so unusual. Looking good in front of Hux has long been a cherished pursuit. So he will continue to take Hux’s cues. Maybe Hux even knows that he’s giving them. He certainly asked to be fucked without batting an eye or mincing his words, and he understands enough about their still unbroken Force link to know that Ren can look straight into him right now.

“This is easier for you than the choking?” Ren asks, palming his cock as it hardens in his pants. It’s a taunt, but also a real question. He didn’t realize until now how long he’s wanted to probe the depths of Hux’s peculiar dimensions, physical and otherwise. 

Hux is watching Ren touch himself and seems to have not heard the question. Ren snaps his fingers in Hux’s face to reclaim his attention. Hux looks up at him, glaring, and then softens his expression as much as possible, irritation still smouldering in his eyes. There’s the nose twitch, too, which makes Ren smirk again. He likes it so much better from up here.

“Trust me, this will still make me loathe you,” Hux says. “But yes. I prefer this.”

“ _Make_ you loathe me? Don’t you already? Isn’t that what’s loathsome about this?”

“Shut up and take your cock out.” Hux doesn’t seem worried about his unchecked insolence this time, but he does add, “Sir.”

Ren considers how to respond to that. Finally he just wants to do as Hux asked, his cock straining uncomfortably against the front of his pants. He pulls them down just enough to take himself out, stroking. Hux watches, keeping his face impassive while even his stubbornest energies succumb to shameless arousal like a long line of dominoes falling. That was another game they played in Jedi school: setting something up for hours, days, only to knock it all down. 

“Get it wet,” Ren says, tapping the head of his cock against Hux’s bottom lip. Hux has plush lips, soft and pink. Ren isn’t sure how he never noticed that. 

Hux exhales one heavy breath onto Ren’s dick before lapping at it. Ren is holding himself by the root, and he’s embarrassed when his cock jumps against Hux’s tongue, precome already gathering on the head. Well, he’s never had this. It’s as good as he assumed it would be, back before he was too enlightened to lower himself to watching holonet videos of the act. In fact it’s so good that he can’t really think, except vaguely of Hux’s name and mouth and closed eyes, lashes fluttering against his pale skin like he’s savoring the shape and weight of Ren on his tongue, his head bobbing slowly along the length of Ren’s dick and then back again, again. There’s a rhythm to it that feels relaxed, natural: Hux is good at this. Ren withholds the urge to tell him so. He puts his hand on the back of Hux’s head and guides him, hips pressing forward. Hux takes him in like it’s nothing, until Ren can feel the squeeze of the back of Hux’s throat around the head of his dick. 

Ren hears himself moan. His eyes fall shut and he fists Hux’s hair. This is bad: Hux is _winning_. But Ren doesn’t pull away. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Ren says in another moan, and then he thinks: no. Say something better, clever. Regain control. Very stale holonet filth blurs through his mind, the actual words just out of reach because of things Hux is doing with his tongue and because of the way Hux keeps sighing contentedly like he’s drinking some perfect drug from Ren’s dick. “Yeah,” Ren says, looking down at him. He sees that the muscle of his stomach has begun to tremble, feels his balls tightening. “Enough,” he says, in lieu of something clever. He pushes Hux’s head back, stares down at him. Hux’s lips are bright and puffy from the effort. His pupils are fat, chin wet. “Get on all fours,” Ren says, hating that he can’t say some other, better thing. He’s usually good under pressure. Maybe this is the opposite of pressure. 

Hux gets onto his hands and knees unsteadily, moving as if the weight of his erection has thrown him off balance. Ren thinks of trying to get a read on him with the Force and then fears any focus on their connection right now might make them both explode in a way that’s not purely orgasmic. He leaves Hux on all fours and goes to the fresher, where he knocks a bunch of Hux’s fussy grooming supplies over in a frantic search for lubricant. Hux doesn’t seem to care about the mess Ren made, his eyes all lit up with expectation when Ren walks back in carrying the lube. Hux is almost literally panting for it, thighs tensing when Ren kneels down behind him. 

This part, Ren really doesn’t know how to do, but he understands the theory of it and yanks Hux against him. 

Hux shouts as if Ren has stabbed him. 

“I’m not going to stick it right in,” Ren says, though he’d planned to make Hux think so. “I’ll, uh. What do you need?”

“It’s-- My back.” Hux is wincing, flopping over onto his side and reaching for his spine as if the press of his palm will undo the damage. “It’s still--” 

Hux must have injured his back during his time in captivity, Ren thinks. When he was being prodded with that electro baton. Or before that, when Ren threw him against a console on the command shuttle.

The look Hux gives him tells him which it was. 

“Come here,” Ren says. He stands, still holding the lubricant. His legs are shaking. “We don’t have to do this on the floor.” 

He offers Hux his hand. Hux pretends not to see it and gets up on his own. His cock is still hard, at least. 

Ren turns from him, surveying the options. There’s that sofa that looks like it’s made of ice blue stone, and Hux’s bed in the adjoining room. Both seem too personal. In the corner near the bar there’s a stately black armchair that’s grand in scale and finely made. Ren has made fun of Hux for it before. _Is that your practice throne?_ Hux didn’t deign to answer the taunt, back then.

Ren sits in the chair, which is big enough to accommodate him and then some, comfortable. Hux stands at a distance, watching him. He’s filled with long-simmering anger now, and also with his long-simmering desire. It’s perfect. Ren pats his thigh with one hand and pumps his cock with the other.

Hux approaches with all the dignity he can manage, which is actually an impressive amount from where Ren sits, considering how much he wants Hux to arrive. Hux has always been good at this: getting up off the floor and striding forward as if he’s never really been lower than anyone. Ren has to hand it to him. Hux wasn’t wrong when he counted this among his greatest talents.

It’s the connection, Ren tells himself, when Hux stops just out of reach and raises his eyebrows in a way that’s as sweet as it’s sarcastic, the warring roles he’s playing for Ren wound up too tightly to separate while Ren waits to have him closer, closer than he’s ever had anyone. It’s just the faulty, pestering Force connection that makes Ren feel like Hux is some kind of admirable figure, standing there waiting for his invitation to sit on Ren’s cock. 

“Closer,” Ren says, beckoning with one finger. “You know where I want you.”

Hux doesn’t deny this. He lowers his gaze and climbs carefully into Ren’s lap, gasping under his breath when his legs open around Ren’s thighs and again when Ren uses his thighs to spread them wider. Hux puts his hands on Ren’s shoulders. Presumptuous. Ren can smell the bitter tea on his breath. 

“Prepare yourself to receive your Supreme Leader,” Ren says, placing the lubricant in Hux’s hand. 

Maybe Hux will know that Ren is demanding this because of his own inexperience with preparing asses and with asses generally. But probably not.

Something in Hux flourishes under these orders: there’s no other way to think of it, he’s preening and celebrating and trying to hold in all manner of wanton noises just for the suggestion that he should finger himself open for Ren’s dick. The throbbing pulse of Hux’s arousal alone almost finishes Ren off untouched. Hux gathers his near-shattered ability to concentrate and leans forward to rest his head on Ren’s shoulder, reaching around for his backside with two slick fingers.

“I have to do it this way,” Hux says, mouth moving on Ren’s skin. “This angle-- For my back.”

“Fine,” Ren says. He wasn’t going to protest the weight of Hux’s head on his shoulder anyway. He cranes his neck forward over Hux’s back, watching him pull his ass cheeks apart. 

Hux moans at the first inward press of one of his slim fingers. Ren shifts so that his dick isn’t brushing Hux’s stomach, not wanting to go off yet. He puts his hands on Hux’s thighs and holds them in place. There’s a fine sheen of sweat on Hux’s skin now, despite the chill in the room. He’s holding Ren’s right shoulder very tightly with his free hand as he works his finger into himself, moving it in and out already. His mouth is wet on Ren’s shoulder, breath hot. 

“When’s the last time?” Ren asks. 

“What, with-- What?”

“With another person.”

“Oh-- I don’t know. Years.” 

“Liar.” It seems impossible that Hux could need this much, _feel_ like this, and deny himself. 

“I’m selective,” Hux says. He turns his face toward Ren’s throat and bares his teeth. It’s just a scrape, a tease of one sharp canine, but it makes Ren shiver. 

That’s a dangerous thing, shivering while someone perches in his lap. It has gone very badly in the past.

But this is Hux, and Hux is uniquely durable. Hux can survive anything. Ren would swear it on the Force itself if someone walked in here just now and asked. 

Possibly he has also gone too long without this, namely all his life. 

“Are you ready?” Ren asks when Hux has worked a second finger in. He’s started to fuck himself in quick little jabs and has begun to hump Ren’s stomach. 

“Yes,” Hux says, slobbering his answer onto Ren’s throat.

“Are you sure? Your Supreme Leader has a big, thick cock. Are you ready to take it, all of me?”

Hux sits back and meets Ren’s gaze, eyes muggy. 

“Yes, sir,” he says, with such deferential softness that Ren no longer cares if it’s an act, if this breaks the link between them or even that he probably won’t be able to last for more than a few thrusts up into Hux’s tight little ass.

He lets Hux do all the work, again afraid he’ll do something wrong and be revealed as a complete novice if he takes control himself. It’s good like this anyway, so good: watching Hux work himself down onto his cock slowly, the way he trembles between Ren’s hands as he takes it, mouth open and head thrown back. 

Ren understands already why he was warned that sex can be dangerous. This is like attachment amplified by a thousand. It’s temporary, of course. But Hux still becomes something temporarily glorious as he drags himself up and down on Ren’s cock, making the softest noises and tipping drunkenly toward Ren before arching away, undulating like a wave. Ren has always loved watching an ocean break and move like it’s alive, like this.

So, clearly: this is only strengthening the connection between them. Ren doesn’t care much at present, because he’s going to come so hard, and Hux is going to take all of it.

“Tell your Supreme Leader how good it feels to have his cock deep inside you,” Ren commands, breathing the words into Hux’s ear. 

The whorish moan that escapes Hux’s lips and the way he clenches hard around Ren’s cock upon hearing himself are better than any words he might have offered in confirmation. Ren throbs and breaks and fills him, his hands sliding up to squeeze Hux’s ribcage as he unloads. He didn’t mean to grab a sore spot, but Hux sort of screams and comes all over Ren’s chest, so maybe he liked that.

They slump together and breathe. Ren feels grateful for his physical body: was this all it ever took to understand the truest gifts it gives? He knows he’s out of his mind, but Hux’s sweat still smells like something he should drink, so he licks some of it up, lapping at the thin coating of it on Hux’s neck. It’s not an apology, but what does he care if Hux thinks of it as such. He presses his lips over Hux’s pounding pulse, essentially kissing him, and that’s what shoots him back toward reality.

Because what the fuck is he doing. 

Whatever he’s doing, he isn’t eager to order Hux off his cock, even when Hux huddles a little too comfortably against his chest. Ren’s mind has cleared. It’s blissfully blank, bright and cool like a shuttered room with all the windows now thrown open, breeze flowing through. Being so literally connected to Hux has brought a calmness to everything that their Force connection stirred up. It’s ironic, unexpected, but many things about the Force make sense in this way once they are revealed. The thing one fears to confront is often the answer he seeks. 

Hux is almost asleep and Ren can feel himself tilting toward some kind of waking madness. He prods Hux to sit upright, then to get off his dick. They both look down, watching as their bodies disconnect. Hux whines when Ren’s come leaks out of him in globs. 

“Look at you,” Ren says, reclining in Hux’s makeshift throne as Hux stumbles back from it, his legs nearly giving out when he returns to reality, too. “A mess.” 

He thinks of telling Hux to turn around and grab his ankles, to give Ren a better view of the state he’s been left in. Ren can do whatever he wants. That’s always been more true that he once wanted to admit. 

But it might hurt Hux’s back, so he doesn’t ask for it.

“Go,” Ren says, gesturing to Hux’s fresher. “Clean yourself up and get dressed.”

Ren tucks his own cock away, demonstrating how much easier it will always be for him to pull himself together. Hux staggers toward his pile of clothes. Ren uses the Force to levitate them into Hux’s hands when he considers that bending for them might have hurt Hux’s back, too. 

It’s the connection. It doesn’t want him hurting Hux. Ren can live with that, for now.

Hux seems confused. He turns toward Ren, the clothing hugged to his chest. 

“You-- Thank you,” Hux says, blinking. 

“It’s nothing. Go, do as I asked.”

When Hux is in the fresher, Ren is free of the visions of him at last, alone in his own mind and thrumming with renewed comfort, something actually like peace. He can feel the threads of the connection still tying them together, loosened now but not severed. It’s as if the Force link has only been placated by this physical contact, sung to and rocked to sleep. Interesting. Ren will investigate further, later. He almost feels like he could sleep again, meanwhile, and he closes his eyes as he rests in Hux’s pretend throne. 

Hux is dressed when he reappears, and Ren is groggy. He stands with a grunt and goes to Hux, aware that he can ask for anything he wants now. Hux is newly calm, too, but also attentive. Waiting to see how he can exploit something that left another person feeling pleased with him, as ever.

“Well then,” Hux says, straightening his tunic. “Were we successful?”

“No.” Ren reaches over to mess up Hux’s hair. He doesn’t like this slicked-down look and keeps running his fingers through it until the wild orange strands are all unleashed from their bonds. Hux stands there taking it, startled but not frightened, counting this as a win. Ren can’t fault him that, though he feels like he won, too. “We’ll have to continue, I think.”

“Yes,” Hux says, so eagerly that Ren has to hold in a laugh.

He can’t remember the last time he laughed.

They leave Hux’s quarters together, Hux headed for the bridge and Ren to his quarters for a shower. He stops Hux halfway there, taking his arm.

Hux sucks in a sharp breath but doesn’t flinch. He meets Ren’s eyes, waiting. 

“I need a cleaning droid,” Ren says. “Special order, significant job. In my quarters.”

Hux studies Ren’s eyes like he’s looking for some hidden message in this statement. 

“Very well,” Hux says. He’s relieved to realize it’s just a simple request, as if this represents a return to normalcy. As if he’s not also walking with a hitch in his step because he just rode Ren’s cock for all its worth. “I’ll have it arranged for you, Supreme Leader.” 

Ren thinks, walking away: there are already about fifteen different ways that Hux pronounces his new title, different meanings attached to each one. 

It’s interesting, all of this.

 

**

Ren sits in his wrecked room and meditates. He’s able to do so in peace now that he’s satisfied his need of Hux’s body. He can confess to himself now that this is a need he has. Why shouldn’t he? Snoke is not here to tell him how to feel about it. 

Without really meaning to, and still with a humiliating air of cowed prostration, he feels himself reaching out to his Knights.

They glow dimly within his consciousness, distant stars. Only Sabin sends him words in response. She’s the least forgiving but also the least likely to avoid confrontation.

 _Is he really gone_.

 _Yes_ , Ren sends back, too eagerly. _I killed him_. 

No response comes but vague acknowledgement. In the silence that follows he hears words that surface within his own mind but still feel plainly spoken to him by those he once swore to protect even as he lead them straight to Snoke.

 _Too little, too late._

Ren rips himself from meditation, but the memories rise to meet him and they are worse: Duro’s face as his broken body slid across the floor, everyone frozen, Snoke laughing. 

_He was too weak for the training. He would have delayed your progress._

Because he doesn’t want to be alone with the memory, or with anything of late, Ren goes to the bridge.

Hux is there, serving capably as promised. He seems lighter in his steps, also relieved of some building pressure by their fuck. Ren watches him and thinks of how he watched Hux years ago, at the start, searching now and then for that shade of orange among all the black and white, against the gray. Even then there had been something in Ren that asked, without forming a real question: _Him? That one?_

Snoke had called Hux weak, too. _That one, yes. He has a particular weakness we can exploit_. Snoke knew what the word _weak_ meant to Ren in this context. There was a warning lodged within it.

Don’t get attached.

Attachment itself is weakness.

Snoke thought so, anyway. He seems to have been right in the case of Rey. Ren has allowed that attachment to wither already. It was brief, manipulated by Snoke himself, and therefore easy to discard. He’ll kill her when they meet again, without hesitation this time. 

Meanwhile, the Force link with Hux comfortably fills the void that Snoke used to whisper from, already asking: what’s the harm in making a place at one’s side for a rabid cur? Snoke suffered no losses for Hux’s proximity. He gained from it, if anything. 

Hux turns from the lieutenant he’d been counseling and meets Ren’s eyes. There’s a promise in the sharpness of his stare, and it’s not the promise of an ally. 

Good. Ren doesn’t need allies anymore. He was never suited for them. Hux is something else. Ren will find a word for it in time, maybe after he hears fifty, a hundred, a thousand different ways that Hux that calls him _Supreme Leader_. It’s strange, thus far, that he likes the snarling, biting ways best.  

 

**


	2. Chapter 2

For every newly unearthed pleasure of living without Snoke, Ren discovers an answering struggle. He expected as much and seeks to confront the difficulties head on, but therein lies one of several problems he’s identified since killing his master. Confrontation was something he was ordered to undertake by Snoke. He’s grown too accustomed to waiting in statis until given a new command to carry out, and on Crait his embrace of self-directed confrontation left him feeling like a defeated fool when he rushed into it with Skywalker. 

He hesitates now to act decisively, and he hates this hesitation. The matter he’s most reluctant to confront does not involve conquest, or any demonstration of his power. It’s not an act of aggression at all, and he’s comfortable only with those at this point. What he needs to do next requires finesse and humility. He’s not accustomed to either, and they feel especially foreign now that he has usurped Snoke’s throne and taken his rightful place above everyone he commands, Hux included.

Hux especially, only he still seems to think he can make demands of Ren when he likes. Ren hasn’t invited Hux to worship his cock again since that first time, three cycles ago now. His idea was to make Hux desperate for it. When Hux shows up to try to badger Ren into attending a memorial and medals ceremony for his officers, Ren thinks perhaps he should have placated Hux with sex earlier. Hux won’t take _fuck no_ for an answer and is following Ren through the halls, pursuing him toward his quarters. Ren grits his teeth and keeps walking. He considers taking Hux over his knee and spanking him once they reach Ren’s now-orderly rooms, but Hux would probably like that too much. 

If only Ren hadn’t proven to Hux that he won’t be Force-choked again until this bond between them is shattered. Therein lies the problem. One of many, stacking up as they are around Ren’s ears. He should have left Hux in that cell on Bjsk. Reaching out with the Force in order to rescue him was another decision undertaken rashly, one Ren is already living to regret. 

“I’m only looking out for your interests here, Supreme Leader,” Hux says when Ren has grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him into his quarters. Hux’s usual combination of hope and dread of Ren acting upon him spills into the energy of the room, and he stands his ground when Ren looms into his space and snarls at him, still holding his wrist, still trying to decide if he wants to throw Hux in the brig for annoying him or throw him over his lap and give him what he really wants. “It would take less than an hour of your time,” Hux says, again, undeterred by Ren’s building fury. He’s almost pleased by it, in fact. Hux has a bottomless craving for attention, Ren has noticed. Negative or otherwise.

“I will not be asked to attend petty ceremonies,” Ren says. “Snoke never did.” 

“Yes, and look what happened to him. None of his supposedly worshipful servants are mourning him.” Hux raises his eyebrows to ensure Ren hasn’t missed that he’s talking about Ren himself, supposedly Snoke’s most worshipful servant. “They want to like you, meanwhile,” Hux says. He shifts his gaze toward Ren’s left shoulder, maybe in response to the warning in Ren’s eyes. “You have a window of opportunity here, to become a different sort of leader. They whisper about having seen your face, and they respect young leadership as long as they feel it makes their leader relatable. Like a peer.” 

Ren laughs under his breath at the idea that he’s the peer of a collection of faceless stormtroopers and officers who might as well lack faces, too. It’s also funny that Hux thinks he’ll believe these people want to like him, or that he’s buying any of this shit about the importance of appearances. 

“You need them,” Hux says, tightly. “Sir.”

“Them?” Ren says, hoping Hux can hear his amusement. Hux is really talking about himself. Projecting his imagined importance onto Ren’s entire army. 

“You want the Resistance wiped out,” Hux says, still holding his ground. “So do we, and our chances to get rid of them at last have never been better. When they’re gone, what will be left to you? The Order is the seat of your power. It’s your kingdom, so to speak. Don’t underestimate the satisfaction of commanding an army that not only fears but admires you.” 

Ren had been preparing to shout in Hux’s face that he doesn’t need the Order to help him find and destroy the Resistance, that in fact he needs another group of people entirely to do that. The heat of this refutation leaves him when he considers that he lost the other group’s admiration long ago, thus his hesitation to call on them. The Knights of Ren must obey him, same as the officers of the Order, same as Hux. But his Knights have come to resent this debt of obedience. 

He has to admit that he wishes they did not, and that in this sense Hux might actually have some kind of point about an ideal position of command versus a compromised one. Unfortunately. 

“I will appear briefly,” Ren says, hating the smug satisfaction this acquiescence gives Hux. Ren will have his turn to feel smug later. “I will make no speeches. I won’t pin medals on anyone. I won’t applaud. I’ll only be there to remind them who they serve.” 

“Precisely.” Hux nods once, his self-congratulating energy almost enough to turn Ren’s stomach. “And your presence alone will mean a great deal to those in your service. The ceremony begins in an hour, as I told you. Would you like me to send in one of my propaganda directors for a wardrobe consultation?”

“What do you think.”

“Right, well. In that case I will see you there, Supreme Leader. It’s the main auditorium on the command deck--”

“I heard you the first time.” 

“Then I’ll go and oversee the final preparations.” Hux swallows, pride faltering as his need of explicit commendation regrows around it, those wild vines within him consuming any victory so quickly. Ren is still holding his wrist. “Unless you require something more of me just now.” 

Ren releases him. Hux is basically begging for it, and the last thing Ren wants to give him is a reward for this bothersome request, even if that reward is a pummelling from Ren’s cock. Hux would see that as a victory, too.

“No,” Ren says. He waves toward the door and moves away without looking at Hux again. “Go.”

Hux leaves, taking the sting of rejection with him. Ren is over-aware of it as Hux hurries away: his clipped gait, suppressed sneer, tight grip on his handheld. Their Force bond needs feeding, but Hux can wait a little longer. Ren enjoys the thought of him suffering through this ceremony, wondering if Ren will hate it enough to deny him for a few more cycles. For that, Ren can suffer, too, with the visions of Hux that flit into his mind even after Hux has finally left him in peace in the purely physical sense.

Though really he’s not even physically free of Hux. He’s free of Hux’s nagging demands and the even more irritating awareness of his thoughts, feelings, but there’s a part of Hux’s physical presence that still holds Ren in its grip even as Hux makes his way to the other side of the ship via lift. Ren has been craving him, too, since their first scratching of the itch for each other that the Force bond has created. He can admit this to himself. 

Unlike Hux, however, he can remain in control of this impulse. 

Longer than Hux can, anyway. Were it up to Hux, they would have fucked ten times already. Hux pulls at him more and more as they get further from their previous consummation, tugging at the Force bond like he needs to drink from it. 

Ren will give him something to drink from soon enough.

The idea of presenting himself to an assembly of officers makes him pace his rooms anxiously, meanwhile. He resents his own nervous tension and grits his teeth, attempting to transform into a purer irritation with Hux for asking it of him. It does make a kind of banal, awful sense that Ren should show himself in a way that Snoke did not, particularly in the aftermath of the loss of the _Supremacy_ and the embarrassment on Crait. He assumes it’s well-known now that it was his idea to direct the battle as he did there, not Hux’s. The idea that he has to answer to his scurrying minions in the Order for anything is infuriating, also asinine, but he’s not opposed to the suggestion that they just want a look at him. He can stand before them like statuary, they can marvel in awe, and perhaps everyone will have gained something from it. 

He considers redirecting his anticipatory energy into reaching out to the Knights and demanding their assemblage at last, then decides it would be wiser to wait until he’s finished with both this ceremonial nonsense and with fucking Hux again in the aftermath. Ren will be calmer then, and refocused, if their last effort to sate the Force bond tells him anything. Perhaps in the counsel of the Knights he will uncover a way to sever the bond. For now he can only give it what it wants if he hopes to keep his mind clear of an increasing preoccupation with Hux.

He thinks idly along those lines of telling Hux about his plan to summon the Knights to the _Finalizer_. Drawing on them for support will make sense to Hux, as much as anything to do with the Force does, but it’s not as if Ren needs Hux’s permission to bring them here, or to do anything. Hux would only interpret Ren’s sharing of this information as an invitation to offer some kind of advice. Ren doesn’t need that. He just needs to identify the right time to do it. Soon, certainly. He has determined that, with all of the Knights assembled and attuned to his energy, whatever blockage Rey has managed to put up against his efforts to locate her and the others will be blasted apart. It’s just a matter of making his energy not repulsive to his Knights. 

Which is where humility comes in, and the idea of being admired and not just feared while in command. Ren has not courted the Knights’ admiration since his desperate appeal when Skywalker’s school burned around them. And he’d had help, then. 

But he’s not afraid of a challenge. He killed Snoke. All these years later, but he did it, and now there is other work to be done. 

Why destroy this powerful girl, he imagines Sabin asking. Why not have her join us.

And then Ren will have explain that he tried that already.

Accepting the occasion to embrace humility has always been his least favorite study of the Force. There was a time when he thought he would never have to do it again. That was when he submitted to Snoke, who humbled him daily for six years, and even before that, really--

There’s someone at his door. Ren consults his wall-mounted chrono, recently replaced after he smashed the old one. Somehow an hour has passed. The officer at the door has come to collect him for the ceremony. 

Ren wants his helmet, his mask, but it’s gone. There will be questions about that, too, when the Knights assemble.

He follows the officer who has summoned him to the ceremony, keeping his face as blank as it can be in its unmasked state. Hux is waiting backstage in the auditorium, a command cap hiding his hair. He hasn’t slicked it down harshly since Ren pulled it free with fingers after they fucked. Ren thinks this is telling, really sort of embarrassing for Hux. It shouldn’t surprise Ren that, obsessed with appearances as he is, Hux wants to suit the tastes of his Supreme Leader.

As if he knows Ren is making judgments about his hair, Ren senses Hux suppressing the urge to remark upon the fact that Ren hasn’t washed his prior to the ceremony or in fact in some days. Ren avoids Hux’s eyes, pleased by Hux’s annoyance with his lack of effort. Let everyone see that they are lucky to have their Supreme Leader here at all. Ren can only court public opinion to a point. He’s not going to put on a little ceremonial dance for the masses the way Hux does, or alter the appearance of his hair in any manner whatsoever. He doesn’t need to lower himself to that sort of posturing, whatever Hux thinks. 

And yet here he is: standing upon a stage as Hux asked him to. Rage begins to build within him, low-simmering but steady as he walks ahead of Hux. Ren stops under the glare of an overhead light and exposes his bare face to the crowd, hating all of them. He forces the start of a snarl away with thoughts of how Hux will repay him for this concession after the festivities are over. 

In the crowd there are rows of officers with perfect posture, rows of stormtroopers behind them. Only four hundred or so total are in attendance. All of them are standing. Of course Hux doesn’t allow anyone who isn’t manning an active console to sit in his presence, for a memorial ceremony or otherwise. Ren can’t fault him for that. He would not have allowed it either.

Hux steps forward to give his prepared speech. Ren tries not to listen. He doesn’t want to hear Crait talked about as a waste of resources or a missed opportunity. If Hux dares to even approach either narrative, there will be consequences. Hux must know that, even if Ren can’t bring himself to wring his neck for the time being. 

“As we look to the Order’s future we must reflect upon the deeds that have propelled us thusly forward,” Hux says. 

Ren wonders if Hux’s speeches always sound this stiff. He’s pointedly avoided hearing them in the past.

“Just as no one can take Starkiller’s glorious victory from us,” Hux continues, “None can retract the work done by our pilots and ground troopers who did their part to carve our way ever forward by taking on the very last of the terrorists who seek to sow galactic chaos, scrambling now into their most desperate corners. Close as we are to stability at last, there are casualties just before the end of any important work, and today we begin by honoring those lost to a worthy cause, keeping with us the spirit of their sacrifice as we close in upon our most glorious era of reign under our new Supreme Leader.” 

Ren was only half-listening to Hux’s pompous blathering and is startled to hear himself mentioned. The reference to the fact that Starkiller’s loss was not wasted was exactly what Ren expected to hear, meanwhile. Hux will never move past that. Ren supposes it hasn’t actually been that long. Time has taken on an odd elasticity since that day, for both of them. 

There is no pause for a bow to the new Supreme Leader from Hux or anyone else. Ren might have liked one, but he’s at least glad there’s no applause. The First Order doesn’t applaud things, generally. They soberly bestow conservative praise, without smiling. Laughing in uniform is forbidden. Ren is fairly sure that provision is Hux’s personal addition to the code of conduct. Snoke laughed upon his throne on a regular basis, not infrequently at Hux. Nor was his laughter at Ren’s expense infrequent. It was Snoke’s way of bestowing the opposite of praise, reminding everyone who knelt before him how ultimately irrelevant even their worst and most profound pain was to him. 

Three surviving pilots and four stormtroopers are given medals or promotions, maybe both. Ren uses the Force to consult the energies of these people as they cross the stage, disinterested in the administrative details of their recognition. Through the Force he senses apprehension, uncertainty, some fear of being in Ren’s presence and something else as each of them takes their turn to clasp Hux’s hand. What they feel for Hux is not purely respect; he has come under suspicion after the recent losses himself, it seems. But it’s not a cruel suspicion, or traitorous. They believe him to be holding things together as best he can. They wonder if what Hux is up against will prove too oppressive to prevent further disaster, but none of them imagines the Resistance will claim any significant victory in the days ahead. 

What Hux is up against, as they see it, is Supreme Leader Ren. Another mystic who glowers about the ship without seeing them and knocks General Hux around as he pleases. 

So Hux was not wrong about Ren needing to put in an appearance here, if indeed Ren needs anything other than cowering obedience from these people. Which remains to be seen.

Those who cross the stage to collect their commendations from Hux do appreciate the revelation of Ren’s face. It’s taken a kind of concession in their favor. Ren is displeased with their thinking so, but when the stage is empty of everyone but him and Hux again, he feels as if this information gained through proximity to his soldiers is at least not useless. He’s always thought of them as insects humming in the background. All his life it’s been easier to think of most people that way rather than dipping into their individual energies and falling headfirst down one black hole or another, but these people aren’t like the ones he grew up around. They are restrained, careful even in their own minds. They want to be controlled, to serve something larger than themselves. They see it as ideal. 

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Hux says to Ren, presumptuous as ever when they’re behind the stage’s red curtain again, those who attended the ceremony filing back out of the auditorium in neat rows, silent except for the almost musical march of their boots. 

“When does your shift end,” Ren asks. 

“I don’t have shifts as such, but if you’re asking when I’m next off bridge duty--” 

“You know what I’m asking.” 

“Yes, sir.” Hux swallows, holding Ren’s gaze. “I have a rest cycle scheduled in five hours.” 

Ren considers whether he wants to do this in his rooms or Hux’s. There is a certain appeal to luring Hux into his lair, and also to intruding as he likes upon Hux’s territory. 

“Prepare yourself to receive me in your quarters then,” Ren says, making every word sound like a threat as he watches Hux’s eyes widen slightly. Best to keep this on Hux’s turf for now, leaving Ren’s aside for when he really wants Hux unsettled. “You owe me for this,” Ren says, more softly and with more menace. 

“Yes,” Hux says, also softly and under his breath, like a confession. 

Ren leaves. He feels Hux watching him go. There’s a stab of belated annoyance at Ren for telling him what to do, as ever, but it’s barely discernible with how awash Hux is in relief. He’s been increasingly preoccupied with Ren, too, since they last fed the fire of their unfortunate connection. But Hux may have been this way regardless of how Ren acted upon him with the Force. He’s got a taste of what it’s like to be at Ren’s mercy now. That perhaps has its own addictive properties, for Hux.

With nothing to do except consider the forthcoming summons of his Knights and the delicate tone thereof, the next five hours pass so slowly that they feel like a taunt at Ren’s expense, then a personal insult leveled at him by Hux. He gets flashes of Hux, but at this distance he can’t tell if Hux is similarly wound up and impatient. He doesn’t seem to be, in the visions. Work distracts him completely, and Ren seethes with envy. It’s much the same for Ren, but it has to be a very particular kind of work to hold his attention. He goes to the rec mats, locks everyone else out and spends some time on physical training, which is typically the closest he gets to a blissful surrender to hard work. It’s unevenly effective, his physical body too attuned to what’s to come in Hux’s quarters to dissolve completely into lifting and battle sims. 

A different, deeper taunting thing within him reminds him that this why Snoke wanted to keep him focused on the physical, on aggression and the burning of energy rather than interior wisdom and the practice of conserving energy for strategic contemplation. 

_He wanted you to be his mindless monster. And now--_

Ren hears this in Sabin’s voice so clearly that he turns from the holo sims he’d been blasting to static with his saber and looks up toward the ceiling, as if she’ll be floating there. He pushes his sweat-soaked hair off his face and turns in a circle, lightsaber still ignited. It occurs to him that he’s dizzy, and then that he’s fallen into his old habit of forgetting to eat. 

It’s not Sabin speaking to him, of course. Just his memories and regrets crafting a hypothetical statement and reading it to him in her voice. She can’t reach him without his invitation. Ren didn’t design their connection that way. Snoke did.

He curses and slams his saber down into the mat he’s standing on when he considers, again, that he should have known Snoke was behind the link with Rey. Of course. Snoke once made it sound like the bond he forged between Ren and the Knights was unique. He lied. 

Sweat-soaked and plagued with visions of Hux squirming in his desk chair as he reviews comm reports, Ren goes to his quarters and commands his personal droid to fetch food from the mess hall. The droid is mute and sturdy, faceless, only intelligent enough to take orders about cleaning and fetching items. Ren didn’t ask for this convenience, but Hux provided it. Hux, who knows what Ren likes. Ren shouldn’t be glad about that, considering how Hux might leverage that information, but he didn’t turn the droid away after it had cleaned and refurbished his rooms. 

Under the blast of real water in his fresher, Ren jerks his cock, teeth grit and eyes closed. He can still see Hux squirming, though now it’s more of a memory than a vision. He sees Hux chewing on his bottom lip, or maybe imagines it. Soon Ren will have that pink, fattened lip between his own teeth, although-- No. That would be too much like a kiss, too tender, even just for the sake of biting it. He launches himself instead into a fantasy about Hux on his lap during a ceremony like the one today. Hux would be naked, maybe adorned with a few pieces of demeaning jewelry. Maybe this jewelry would be dangling from piercings on his stiff, tender nipples, which Ren would toy with idly while half-listening to ceremonial nonsense, everyone in the crowd straining to hear Hux’s little gasps and soft whines whenever Ren tugged at his sore nipples roughly. Hux would be so hard for this treatment, legs spread to accommodate his dick as precome dribbled pathetically down the shaft for all to see.

Ren groans and comes, feeling stupidly accomplished for half a breath, then just stupid.

When he emerges his food has arrived. He eats wearing only his towel, enjoying the lack of ceremony now. The droid waits against the wall. Ren imagines Hux in its place, on his knees and awaiting Ren’s next request. This sort of fantasy is less appealing now that he’s not frantically pumping his cock as he indulges it. In reality he prefers Hux’s subservience to be less grotesque, hidden behind the formalities and duties of command. This suits Hux more than serving Ren food would.

Ren dresses and goes to Hux’s quarters, careful not to hurry his steps. It’s not as if Hux will know that he has, but he doesn’t want to be seen by any passerby looking like he’s in a rush to reach Hux, though they would almost certainly assume that Hux was going to be throttled in some way other than what Ren has in mind.

It bothers him to think of being seen at all. Prior to that ceremony, and before these recent days without his mask, he never thought about who saw him doing what. Snoke saw everything, and no one else’s judgment mattered.

He lets himself into Hux’s quarters as usual, surprised that he hasn’t gotten a vision of Hux’s current status on the way over. As he strides through Hux’s front room he imagines Hux spread out on the bed for him, some kind of sex toy inserted already, keeping him open like a placeholder for Ren’s dick. 

But Hux isn’t even undressed. He’s at his comm station, frowning at the screen. He barely remembers to rise from his seat as Ren enters his bedroom. 

“Were you recently in the rec area?” Hux asks. “I’m hearing reports of mats melted into the floor. Sounds like lightsaber burns to me.” 

“So what if was?” Ren stalks toward Hux, who backs up and nearly upsets his desk chair. “It’s my ship. I’ll do to it what I like.”

“Of course, sir-- Supreme Leader-- I just wanted to ensure that it wasn’t some, some other offender.”

“Some other person who uses a lightsaber?”

“It might have been another weapon, or--” 

“If repairs are needed on my ship, you’re to see to them without bothering me with the details. I thought you were smart enough to understand that, General.” 

Hux doesn’t dare a response, his slow-motion nose twitch almost proceeding into a full snarl. His hatred for Ren’s referral to the _Finalizer_ as his ship is profound, almost arousing. 

Ren might be aroused by anything Hux does right now, this close to appeasing their now-screaming bond again. He wants to lick across Hux’s mouth and taste his fury, but Hux would take it the wrong way. Above anything, it’s the ship that Hux can’t abide turning over to Ren, at least without his rage almost boiling over like this. Hux can turn over the throne, his ass, the whole First Order fleet in theory, but the _Finalizer_ still feels like it should be his, even considering all else he’s given up. 

Ren files that away. He hardly needs to further rile Hux right now. The anticipation in Hux’s energy is already rising to meet Ren’s own, despite Hux’s fury. It’s best like this: wanting, enraged, both of them hating this as much as they need it.

“Acknowledge my command,” Ren says, with mocking softness.

“Yes, sir.” 

“Repeat it. I want to make sure you grasp it at last.” 

“I-- I’m to oversee repairs myself.” 

“Upon my ship.” 

“Yes, Supreme Leader.” Hux lowers his gaze. Ren would be offended, but it’s all Hux can manage to do without screaming. “Any repairs to all of your ships will be taken care of. I will not trouble you--”

“That enough. Go sit on your bed.” 

Ren feels the sting of that command hitting Hux, then bouncing back to slither over Ren’s skin like wet heat. _Your_ bed. Hux can claim ownership of that, according to Ren’s benevolence. But not the ship it sits upon. 

Hux does as Ren asked, primly. Knees together. He lets his hands rest uncertainly on the mattress and flexes his fingers once, as if he wants to pull handfuls of the sheets into them. His sheets are tucked much too tightly to grasp, the bed regulation-made. He takes half a breath to gather himself and looks up at Ren. There’s a kind of steely defiance in his gaze that Ren finds he likes. This would be boring if Hux weren’t still looking at him that way. 

Ren stands close enough for Hux to feel the heat of him through his clothes, though they’re not touching. Their bond flares and reaches out, invisible appendages with surprising strength grabbing for Hux even as Ren hangs back just enough to make Hux wonder what will happen this time and how soon it will begin. Ren puts his thumb on the underside of Hux’s chin and tilts his head back more dramatically. 

“I took your counsel today,” Ren says. 

“Yes,” Hux says. Something in him mellows, as if he thinks this acknowledgment of fact is a compliment. Ren digs his thumb more firmly into the soft skin under Hux’s chin, like there’s a button there that needs pressing. 

“For the good of the Order,” Ren says. “I listened to my little General.”

“Yes,” Hux says, bitterly now. 

“Are you grateful?” 

“Yes, Supreme Leader.” 

“Mhm.” Ren lifts his eyebrows, doubting that. “Show me. Lay yourself out for your Supreme Leader in gratitude.”

Ren releases Hux’s chin and steps back. He folds his arms over his chest, waits. 

Hux stares, already overcome. His pupils have fattened and relief is seeping into him, not washing away the rage so much as mixing with it, pouring fuel on all his fires. He reaches for the top clasp on his uniform tunic and pauses, searching Ren’s face.

“How do you want me?” he asks, as if this command is a test and not a game. “Sir?”

“Do I have to spell everything out for you? Undress. Slowly.” 

Ren has had some time now to reflect on the perfunctory way Hux took his clothes off for him last time, and how he hurried to shed them at Ren’s command. Upon further consideration, over the past three cycles, Ren has decided he’d prefer this: Hux’s reverence demonstrated through the careful unveiling of his pale skin. Hux’s squirming attempts to stem his eagerness to reveal himself are good, too. 

Hux moves his hands away from his collar and changes tactics, focusing first on his gloves. He removes them slowly, as instructed, tugging at each finger before pulling one off, then the other. 

Ren feels his whole cumbersome body wanting to tilt toward the bed just at the sight of Hux’s wrists. They look so snappable like this, exposed. The thought makes Ren’s stomach lurch, their Force bond filling him with rage at the thought of Hux being hurt, and at the memory of watching a Katalonian snap one of his thin fingers. 

Hux holds Ren’s gaze as his bare hands move back to the clasps of his tunic. He wants further instruction, isn’t good at finding his own rhythm outside of pure efficiency. His nervous energy feeds Ren’s need to devour him and makes it harder for Ren not to throw himself forward onto the bed, onto Hux, but he can control himself. He’s learning. In the meantime he can only imagine what his eyes must look like, already feasting. Hux’s chest is doing a short of quiver-thing beneath his black undershirt when he pushes the tunic away. 

Ren uses the Force to collect Hux’s discarded gloves and tunic, not wanting them left strewn across the bed. It would spoil the scene he has in mind. Hux watches them sail into Ren’s hands, latent fear spiking and then easing when Ren tosses them onto his desk chair, manually now. 

What did Hux think Ren would do with them? Eat them? Hux’s fear responses are strange, unpredictable. They’re worth studying, Ren decides, even outside of their relation to the Force bond.

Hux’s effort to remove his undershirt as slowly as possible is comical. Ren manages to hold in the threat of laughter that tightens at the base of his stomach, not wanting to discourage Hux’s performance. He wonders if the impulse to laugh at Hux means he’s becoming more like Snoke already, upon his figurative throne. But he wasn’t going to laugh _at_ Hux, exactly. Their connection probably wouldn’t have let him, though it did allow him to injure Hux with that reminder that the _Finalizer_ is no longer his ship. 

Ren summons Hux’s stripped-off undershirt with the Force, noting again the prick of alarm in Hux’s energy as he watches his clothing move through the air. His alarm is less intense this time, but still there. Hux refocuses and works his pants open, coming up onto his knees so he can ease them down slowly over his thighs for Ren’s viewing pleasure. 

“Are you shaking?” Ren asks. 

“No,” Hux says, though he is, just a bit, along his spine and across his shoulders. He’s not afraid, not really. He’s vibrating with excess energy, frustrated by the pace of this clothing removal and by Ren’s impassive, distant stare. “Fuck,” Hux says, muttering this under his breath when his pants are bunched around his knees. 

“Something wrong?”

“I forgot-- I should have done my boots first.” 

“You forgot how to undress yourself?”

“It’s not as easy as you’d think,” Hux says, daring a mild glower. “With an audience.”

Hux drops onto his ass and unzips one boot, remembering only halfway down to go slow. He’s not especially hard but also isn’t entirely soft, the shape his rising cock obvious against the front of his snug black briefs. Noticing it makes Ren start to harden, too. He’s thought about what Hux would do if Ren put his mouth there, or anywhere between his legs, if Hux would come for the first swipe of Ren’s tongue or get prudish and tense. Hux gasps when Ren floats his left boot away from the bed with the Force as soon as it’s off his foot. Ren lets it clatter to the floor near Hux’s desk while Hux watches, heart thudding. 

They lock eyes as Hux eases the zip down on his other boot. He has skinny calves; the boots hide them. Everything about his clothing is designed to conceal his slenderness. Ren licks his lips. He likes the idea that he’s peeling away Hux’s protective layers simply by being present. Hux’s other boot leaves the bed, borne by the Force, and Hux rolls his pants down. Just taking them off has made him harder already. 

Up on his knees again, Hux touches the waistband of his briefs. He’s anxious to get them off, to get on with this and see what Ren will do to him, but he hesitates. He thinks Ren wants to be teased, that this is why he asked for Hux to expose himself slowly. Hux doesn’t understand that he’s the one being teased, even as his cock gets fully hard and begins to leak against the front of his underwear as he toys with the waistband, feigning shyness. 

“Enough,” Ren says. “Get them off.”

He didn’t intend to say that, to give Hux what he wants to hear, but now it’s out, and Hux is quick to obey, relieved. Ren flicks his discarded underwear away from the bed with the Force. They smack against the back of Hux’s desk chair and drop to the floor. Now Hux is the one who looks like he might laugh. 

“Don’t just sit there, ingrate,” Ren snaps. “Do as I asked. Present yourself to me properly.” 

The threat of laughter is gone. Hux scrambles to get in position. Ren thought he might have turned onto all fours to hold his ass cheeks apart or something similarly dramatic, but his back might still be too sore for that. Hux spreads himself out over the pristine landscape of his bed, lying on his back with his knees bent, his twitching thighs sliding open wider, wider, until he’s as open as he can be and breathing harder for it. 

“Like this?” Hux says. He pushes his arms up over his head and rests them, wrists crossed, on the thin pillow that’s tucked under his sheets. “Sir?”

Hux looks somewhat ridiculous but also very good. Without realizing it, Ren has started palming himself through his pants, and for a moment he understands what it must be like to be helplessly acted upon by another person’s energy, to have no recourse except to be pulled along. There’s some sparse red hair under Hux’s arms. Ren didn’t think to expect that. The hair between Hux’s legs is something he anticipated and has imagined before, but the little shock of red under both his arms seems even more intimate. 

“You’re so excited,” Ren says. He stops pawing at his own dick before nodding with a measure of judgment at Hux’s, which is pink and stiff, standing up straight between the frame of his creamy thighs. Creamy-- That’s what Hux looks like, undressed. Like something that should be licked up. 

“It’s never-- Been like this,” Hux says. His fingers flex, hips shift. He wants to touch himself, but doesn’t want Ren to see him do it. Because it would seem weak.

“Like what,” Ren says when Hux doesn’t continue.

“Fucking?” Hux laughs when he hears how uncertain he sounds about even this, his eyes closing briefly before he meets Ren’s gaze again. “But it’s not just that, it’s-- It’s this connection we tried to undo. I feel it prickling at me, all the time. Ren, it makes me need-- Things. That is, you--” 

“All right,” Ren says, not sure when or how he should object to the use of his name rather than his title. Something sharp and deep within him flares outward. 

Hux shouts and flinches, his shoulders going tense. 

“Please,” Hux says, eyes pinched shut, head tossing back and forth as he draws his arms in against his chest. “Not with the Force, please. Sir.”

Ren didn’t do it on purpose. “You felt that?” he says, intrigued. He’s used the Force to interact physically with objects by instinct before, usually just to grab them in self defense, but to his knowledge it’s never happened with a person.

Hux opens his eyes and nods, blinking. “Just-- Something crawling over my skin. Pressure.” 

“You didn’t like it?” 

“No.” Hux exhales and pushes his arms up onto the pillow again, slowly, watching Ren with caution and trying to recapture his determination to act a certain way: like a thing that should be licked up, consumed. Of course it’s intentional. He wets his lips and crosses his wrists over his head again, as if they’re bound together by some invisible string. Ren wonders if it’s something he learned to do according to some other man’s tastes. “You could use your hands,” Hux says.“If you like.” 

Ren doesn’t like being told what to do, especially here, but if he’s going to push Force energy onto Hux’s skin without even meaning to, he might as well make a more intentional move. He puts one knee on the bed and looms over Hux, scanning him and considering what to touch first. He can sense with almost painful clarity how much Hux wants him to remove his gloves and touch him with bare hands. Hux is cold, lying uncovered like this, and he thinks Ren’s hands will be warm. 

Ren leaves his gloves on. Hux sucks in his breath when Ren glides his fingers first over the soft skin and hair exposed beneath his raised left arm.

“Sorry,” Hux says in a whisper when he flinches away from Ren’s touch, voice caught. “It’s just-- There, it’s, ah. Sensitive.” 

“Here?” Ren touches him under his arm again, brushing his fingertips just over the ends of the wispy hairs there. Hux tries not to react. He’s squirming, his shoulder twitching. 

“Ah--” Hux winces when Ren drags his thumb upward, increasing the pressure.

“So soft.” Ren had intended that to sound more mocking, less awed. “Does it hurt?”

“No, just-- I don’t know--”

“You object to me touching you here?”

“No! You can-- It’s all--” Hux looks up into Ren’s face. He holds his breath for a moment, then releases it in a bitten-off little sigh. “It’s all yours, Supreme Leader. It’s just an involuntary reaction.” 

“Like that one?” Ren glances down at Hux’s erection. 

“Mhm. Maybe less pleasant than that one.” 

“That’s pleasant? Being hard and untouched?” 

“Well-- Up to a point. Yes.” 

Ren swallows a kind of snort-laugh and moves his hand to the center of Hux’s chest. He doesn’t need the Force to feel Hux’s relief at being touched there instead, where he’s not ticklish. His little nipples are very stiff, standing up for Ren, same as his cock. Ren circles one just lightly with his thumb, then the other. 

“You know they pierce these, in some cultures,” Ren says, keeping his eyes on Hux’s face while he brushes his thumb more firmly over one nipple, bringing it from pink to red. Hux is watching Ren’s hand. He pulls his gaze up to meet Ren’s when he feels Ren staring at him. 

“I know that,” Hux says. Offended by the suggestion that this might be new information. 

“What would you say if your Supreme Leader ordered yours to be pierced.” 

Hux almost laughs, then looks concerned. “Why would he-- You, that is--” 

“Do you need to know why?”

“Just curious,” Hux mutters, looking down at Ren’s hand again as it slides to his other nipple, leaving the first one just puffy enough for his liking. 

“So I could adorn them with dangling jewels,” Ren says. “For aesthetic reasons. For my amusement,” he amends, not wanting to suggest that Hux is aesthetically pleasing. 

He is, though. Like this, without his stodgy uniform or that gunk making his hair look like a helmet. Ren has improved him already, so why not take it a step further? 

“I could have a lieutenant do it,” Ren says, feeling inspired. He smirks when Hux’s gaze snaps to his. “Yes, I think that would be perfect. You strapped into an interrogation chair, naked from the waist up. One of your best and most loyal lieutenants wielding the piercing tools at my command. I would observe the procedure, of course, giving instruction. Would your cock stand up for that, too?” 

Hux gasps when Ren presses hard against his nipple, using this thumbnail. Through the glove, it’s not very sharp, but Hux is imagining the scenario Ren described, hating the idea even as it sends waves of arousal down to his already pulled-tight balls, his cock twitching when Ren digs his thumb in relentlessly. 

“What do you think?” Ren asks. “What would you say if I arranged this for you?”

“I’d say it would make us seem like a couple of depraved lunatics to our lessers,” Hux snaps, unable to help himself. 

Ren smiles. There’s the nose twitch. Hux being authentically horrified by him is so much better than his fake demurring routine, especially when Hux stays rock hard for him anyway. 

“General,” Ren says. He leans down to Hux’s ear, moving just close enough to bump it with his bottom lip when he whispers, “We are a couple of depraved lunatics.” 

“Speak for yourself, sir.” 

Hux turns his face toward Ren’s: hopefully, brazenly. Ren keeps close just long enough to feel Hux wonder, again, if Ren will kiss him. It’s a strange fixation, because he seems to truly fear that Ren will, and yet he’s waiting for it, and annoyed by Ren when he moves away without doing it. 

Ren runs his fingertips over Hux’s sides and across his belly, avoiding his cock except for the lightest brust of his wrist as he moves down to squeeze the hairless insides of Hux’s spread thighs. Hux makes choked-off noises under his breath and watches, his fingers clenching and uncurling over his head. 

“Has anyone ever bitten you here?” Ren asks, rubbing his thumbs into the soft flesh of Hux’s inner thighs. 

“Bitten me?” Hux says. He’s trying so hard not to flex into Ren’s touch, then not to flex away from it. He’s also trying not to moan. 

“It looks edible, just here.” 

“It?”

“Your skin.” 

Hux exhales through his nose. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t think so.” 

“You wouldn’t remember if someone had used his teeth here or not? You’ve had so many partners, the details are lost to time?”

“No.” Hux frowns down at him. He’s stopped trying to school his expressions, too focused on keeping himself still under Ren’s hands. Ren doesn’t mind. “I told you. I’ve been selective.” 

“And yet you can’t answer my question.”  

Hux opens his mouth and then presses his lips together, fighting the urge to explain. “I don’t always track these encounters like I would anything else.”

Ren genuinely doesn’t know what that means. He thinks of probing Hux’s mind with the Force, then just says, “What?” 

“My mind goes a bit offline. During this, so. Maybe someone dragged his teeth there, I don’t know. Nobody’s bitten me hard enough to leave a scar. As you can see.” 

“Funny,” Ren says. He moves back, leaving Hux jumpy for more of his touch. “You didn’t seem all that lost to pleasure when I saw you beating off in your shower.” 

“You-- What! When?” 

Hux sits up on his elbows, teeth grit and knees pulling together. Ren gives him a hard stare, warning him not to overstep the allowances his Supreme Leader has already offered. Hux huffs and spreads his legs again but doesn’t lie back. 

“Right,” he says. “You saw me through this connection thing, I imagine?”

“Yes. I didn’t mean to, it just happens, same as it happens for you.” Except that Hux can’t see him, can only feel him looking. “You think I wanted to see that? It was sad, your little routine. No different from shaving your face or washing your hair.” 

“How would you know! Just because you’ve seen some glimpse-- I don’t have time for, for--” 

“You jerk yourself like it’s a chore. I saw that much.” Ren moves off the bed, enjoying the heat of Hux’s indignation. He drops to a seat in Hux’s desk chair and rolls it forward, spreading his legs. “Maybe you need instruction in this area, from your superior.” 

Hux says nothing. His expression makes his feelings on the idea clear enough: he’s deeply annoyed by both this criticism and by the suggestion that he should touch himself, when Ren and his hands and all the rest of him is right there, stubbornly distant. 

Ren uses the Force to float himself and the desk chair to the end of Hux’s bed, settling it there so that they’re properly facing each other, Ren’s knees just short of touching the end of the mattress. Hux doesn’t like this maneuver: he’s almost cowering after witnessing it, his shoulders pulling up toward his ears. He’s newly afraid of the Force now that Ren wields it without Snoke’s leash upon his powers. 

Good, Ren thinks, reaching down to take his cock out. Hux should have always been more respectful of what he can do. He strokes himself while Hux watches, determined to keep from touching Hux overmuch, if at all, for the rest of this encounter. He can see from where he sits now that Hux has lubed and loosened himself with a few fingers, his hole pinked and wet. He was so sure he was going to get what he wanted from Ren, that he was going to be filled and fucked again.  

“Take hold of yourself,” Ren says, giving a condescending nod toward Hux’s cock. “I’m going to show you how to do this properly. Follow my example.” 

Hux sits up on one elbow and grasps his cock with his free hand. His legs are still spread, bent knees wide open and resting on the mattress. He looks clumsy like this. Sweet, too, in a way that would embarrass him if he could see himself. There’s a little roll over his stomach. Ren wants to bite that, too. 

“No,” Ren snaps when Hux’s hand starts to move on his cock: desperate, grip tight, his eyelids lowering with relief already. “Stop. You’re so bad at this, General. Like this. Slowly.” 

Hux boils at the suggestion that he doesn’t know how to handle himself, but he does as Ren asked, trying to mimic the roll of Ren’s palm and the pace of his strokes. Ren is boiling, too, with arousal, mostly at the idea of being so ahead of Hux’s in this game that he’s giving instruction as a secret novice. Hux clearly needs it, in this area if not others, and what Ren lacks in experience with a partner he makes up for solely by having such a magnificent dick and by knowing how to wield it such that Hux’s annoyance has mostly dissipated as he watches Ren touch himself. 

“You’re going too fast again,” Ren says when Hux becomes fixated on watching him and forgets what he’s doing to himself beyond pumping his hips into the friction. “Are you going to come? Without permission, in defiance of my orders?” 

“I didn’t--” Hux’s hand stills. Hips, too. He’s breathing in shudders through his parted lips, the arm he’s propped himself up with beginning to tire and shake. “Maybe you should come over here and demonstrate. Sir.” 

“You’d like that. No, you’ve got to learn how to take proper care of that little cock yourself. I won’t always be around to tend to your needs.” 

Ren has to ease his grip on himself when he gets a sense of Hux’s aroused humiliation, that Hux _likes_ being told he has a small cock. It doesn’t actually look all that small in Hux’s hand, full and red and leaking, but Ren’s hand would dwarf it. Hux would love that. Ren bites the end of his tongue and staves off another wave of pleasure that threatens to finish him off too soon. If only Hux knew. Ren is sure he appears perfectly in control, at least.

Hux is beginning to visibly fall apart, meanwhile. He wants to drop onto his back and fuck up into his hand, but not half as much as he wants Ren to fall onto him and at least grind against him until they both go off. The tug of his need is hard to resist with the connection always trying to yank them back together, but Ren manages, thinking: let Hux always wonder how these encounters will play out. He should never assume he knows what to expect or that he can adequately prepare.

“Do you need to come?” Ren asks. “Are you so overtaken already by the application of my technique?”

Hux huffs. It’s like a laugh, or almost was one.

“What’s funny,” Ren asks.

“Nothing, I--” Hux lets his elbow give out at last, whining when doing so twinges the ache in his back. He was thinking that Ren sounded very young just then. Ren lets it slide. 

“Answer my question,” he says. “And speak clearly. Isn’t that a talent of yours? Speech?”

“I need to come!” Hux throws his arm over his eyes and groans. “Although. I could wait. Whatever you like. Ren, ah-- Sir--” 

“Look at me.”

Hux does, his arm flopping away from his face and onto the bed. He’s flushed, not in the splotchy way that Ren had expected but all over in a fine tint, pinked. 

“Touch yourself the way I showed you,” Ren says, standing. “I’ll evaluate your performance. Then we’ll see.”

Ren stands over Hux, stroking his cock while Hux does the same. Hux starts to paw at his own chest at one point and Ren loves it, moves his fist faster on his dick for the sight, but then Hux stops abruptly, as if he’s caught himself breaking protocol, and Ren doesn’t know how to ask him to do that again, please. 

“Is this good?” Hux asks, though he knows that it is. Ren can feel him sensing it, or at maybe just seeing it: that Ren is coming apart, too, his legs shaking as he gets close. “Supreme Leader?” Hux adds, letting his voice crack on the _ah_ at the end of his pronunciation of Ren’s title, making sure to sound like he’s desperate for an answer. Maybe he is. Ren can’t tell what’s real and what’s fake when he’s this close to coming. 

That’s dangerous, he thinks. Hux is a fucking dangerous menace from hell.

Thinking so breaks over Ren like relief, and he groans as he stumbles forward, kneeling on the bed so he can spill himself all over Hux’s bared chest. Hux sort of squeaks when Ren’s come hits him, not in shock but because he wants to come too and he can’t, can’t, not until Supreme Leader says so. Ren wrings himself dry with a groan, wanting to reach down and grab a handful of Hux’s surrendered desperation, wanting to rub it all over himself as if it’s a fallen enemy’s blood.

“Come,” Ren says, raining this command down onto Hux like a death blow. 

Hux groans and obeys, arching. His seed mixes with Ren’s on his chest and belly, becoming indistinguishable. Ren thinks that might be dangerous, too. Like they’ve just performed some ritual. 

Strange that he likes the idea. An aftereffect of orgasm, probably, or some complication of the connection. He’ll sever it when the Knights get here. Hux is no match for him until then, panting under Ren’s stare and covered in come, still wanting to be fucked. 

“I hope you don’t think I missed this shameful presumption,” Ren says, reaching down between Hux’s legs. He shoves one still-gloved finger in unceremoniously and Hux shouts, hips jerking. As Ren expected, there’s no pain from this intrusion, just surprise. Hux prepared himself thoroughly to take Ren’s cock. “You got yourself wet for me,” Ren says, fucking into him a little. 

Hux writhes, scrabbling in vain at the bedsheets that are pulled too tight to be grasped, his spent cock twitching on his belly. Even ready like this, he’s so tight around Ren’s finger. Ren is in some form of awe for the thought that he had his whole dick inside Hux, and that Hux bounced on it like he couldn’t get enough. 

“You said,” Hux says, trying to focus his muggy gaze on Ren’s, “To prepare, prepare for you--” 

“This isn’t what I meant.” It was, actually, but Hux doesn’t need to know that. Ren is still feeling him, dragging his finger in and out. “You think you deserve my cock for every suggestion of yours that I follow?”

Hux laughs under his breath. He looks insane: his hair is wrecked, eyes dark and gummy with pleasure. 

“I don’t expect you to follow, _ahh_. Any suggestion, my lord. Ever.” 

That could be taken as criticism or as supplication. Ren appreciates the lack of clarification. It’s clever. Hux can be clever, in the way that Ren prefers his opponents to be, as long as the game they’re playing is one he knows he can win. He curls his finger, knowing there’s a particularly good spot to find but not how to locate it precisely.

“My lord,” Ren says, mimicking Hux’s accent. “What is that. Where do you get off inventing titles for me.” 

“I get off, nnh-- Wherever you want me to, Ren.” 

“Now you use my name as if we’re equals. As if we ever were. Maybe I’ll put you over a console, get you off there. Let everyone on the bridge see how much you like taking dick.”

Hux groans. Does he even know Ren wouldn’t actually do that? Their connection hisses with disapproval at the thought of Hux being exposed for someone else’s eyes. It rejects and loathes the idea that anyone else deserves to see the General stripped and wet with come, that anyone but Ren could appreciate it as much--

 _I’ve got to fuck him_ , Ren thinks. It’s like he’s begging some master who still lives in his head: _please, please, look at him, he’s mine, he knows it, let me have him_ \--

Ren pulls his finger out. Hux gasps. He rolls onto his side when Ren stands and walks backward, watching as Hux’s knees pull up toward his chest like he’s trying to hide himself now, after all that. Hux has started to get hard again, same as Ren. They stare at each other, alarm rising through Hux’s energy when he sees the stricken look on Ren’s face. 

Ren turns away from him and tucks his cock into his pants. It feels over-sensitive and also untended somehow. This is bad; he’s out of control in the service of this thing that wants to be inside Hux, this connection that isn’t even sated by everything else they’ve just done. 

“What’s wrong?” Hux asks.

“Nothing. We’re done here. I have pressing business elsewhere.”

Ren leaves without looking at Hux again, and as he prowls through the hallways of the ship he can’t shake the sensation of being exposed, like he forgot to put some article of clothing back on, though he didn’t take anything off. Hux’s smell is all over him. He’ll have to throw these gloves away.

Even back in his room, alone in the dark with his droid, he checks every corner for some onlooker. It’s no comfort when he finds them all empty. 

He’ll undo the connection soon. He’ll call the Knights, they will give counsel. He will find new purpose among them, and the dalliance with Hux will fade to irrelevance. It won’t control him in the meantime, even as this burning thing tightens his jaw and tells him, _you could just go back, he’ll be there, so warm and tight and grateful, and what is there to lose from partaking of that which you already own?_

Ren knows enough about Force connections not to trust this thing, or himself, until he can get rid of it once and for all.

 

**

In a parade of the usual nightmares a variety of old men try to kill him. Slaughtering them before they can fails to bring him satisfaction, as ever, and he wakes sweaty and hard, though none of his dreams had anything to do with sex. He gets rid of the erection under the blast of cold water in his shower, teeth grit. Sex is Hux’s weapon, and Ren can’t entangle himself in that sticky, mind-consuming fight right now. He needs mental clarity and bodily purity if he hopes to make his case to the Knights when he reaches out to them. 

Which he will do. Soon, and with finality. He will not offer them the opportunity to turn him down. 

But if they don’t truly want to help him the entire effort will come to nothing, or worse. Ren has imagined a melee like the one against Snoke’s guards, where he at least had Rey on his side until the killing was done. He’s also imagined Sabin demanding the title of Master and telling him, with the coolest and sharpest blade in her voice, that he can keep the title of Supreme Leader for himself. 

None of that can happen. He needs them more than ever within this vacuum, to make sense of his theories about Force bonds, projection, and the power held by ghosts. 

So he waits. For what, he’s not sure. But it’s coming. 

In the meantime he feels compromised, like some illness has crept through the ventilation system on Hux’s ship and infected him with particles tracked aboard on a stormtrooper’s boot. He knows it’s Hux himself that has infected him, after Ren was stupid enough to open his mouth and swallow some part of Hux that he now can’t expel. It’s an annoyance but not a defeat: Hux has gained nothing through their connection beyond a few assisted orgasms. He holds the same rank he did beforehand, and no real influence over Ren. Their bond is artificial, manufactured for a purpose that has now expired, just like the connection to Rey. 

Ren keeps clear of Hux for two cycles, and the connection punishes him for this restraint with almost nonstop peeks at what Hux is doing, flitting always at the edges of Ren’s vision like holo torture. He knows every detail of Hux’s routine by now: the bland meals taken alone in his quarters, the obsessive attention paid to the kind of reports that should be beneath his personal review, endless meetings with suppliers and lessers and his topmost advisors, the way his heel taps on the floor under conference tables when he knows he can win an argument and make someone sound stupid in the meantime but has to wait his turn to speak to get the full effect. 

Ren’s rest cycles are a brief respite. Once Hux has stimmed himself with his sleep aid, the visions relent. He’s at least free from witnessing dreams, as Hux claims not to have any. That seems true on Ren’s end.

Ren can’t sleep even when Hux does. He rests, stretching out in his bed and closing his eyes when he can’t hold them open any longer, but it’s not full sleep. Typically he prefers this to fully surrendering his consciousness, but with contacting the Knights looming ever closer to necessity and the right words for them still evading him, he needs a true release from his own mind so he can come back to it more cleanly. 

Whenever he's close to achieving this, Hux comes screaming back into his thoughts. Ren’s dick gets hard just for the thought of Hux’s similar toiling, though he doesn’t want to know of it. Hux is distracted, unsettled, longing for him. Ren can feel it from across the ship now. 

They finally have to meet when Ren overhears some senior officers discussing a stronghold that is being maintained on Crait.

Crait. A First Order encampment on fucking Crait. Ren was not told. He storms directly to Hux’s office and rips the door open with the Force, sparks shooting from its mechanics as it slams into its wall slot. It wasn’t locked, but Ren needed to make a statement.

“Ah, Supreme Leader,” Hux says, looking up from the holo screen at the center of his oversized desk. “There you are.”

As if Ren is late for some meeting Hux scheduled.

“What the fuck are you doing on Crait?” Ren asks. The office door is now broken, so any passerby might hear him screaming at Hux. Good. Let them. “There’s nothing for us there!”

“On the contrary,” Hux says. “It was the least expensive and most strategically appropriate place for us to tow the remains of the _Supremacy_ after it was no longer flight capable. Though the ship is badly damaged as such, what remains is significant and has great value.” 

Hux is calm. He’s been expecting this outburst. Possibly he’s been wanting it. His energy suggests that he’s even enjoying the semi-public nature of it, though there’s also a stark peel of fear when Ren approaches his desk and grabs the front of it like a threat. Ren considers lifting the entire desk over his head with the Force and pitching it through the transparisteel wall behind Hux. The wall looks down over the main command bridge. There would be crew injuries, major damage to monitors. 

“That planet is not suitable even for one of our junkyards,” Ren says. He wants to be calm, too, but his heart is slamming and he can smell Hux’s hair. “Move the wreckage elsewhere.”

“Supreme Leader--” 

“No debate. We will not have anything stationed on Crait, ever.” 

“If you would please explain why, sir,” Hux says, standing. His calm is fading, rage building fast like he prepared for this part of their confrontation, too. “That would be helpful. As it is, it would be an enormous expense to move the two remaining sections of the _Supremacy_ to another location, and as it is we cannot afford to lose either of them, as they contain important manufacturing--” 

“I was told that Snoke’s personal chambers were destroyed upon impact.” 

“They were. There was a fire--” 

“The rest is of little value to me. Do what you will with it, but get it off Crait. I don’t care what it costs.” 

“I might suggest that you should care, sir,” Hux says, lowering his voice and putting his fists on his desk when he leans over it, toward Ren. “Seeing as we have not yet identified or claimed the source of our previous Supreme Leader’s wealth, and thus are no longer operating as if money is no object.”

“We?” Ren grabs Hux’s desk again, thinks again of throwing it through a wall. “You have failed. The location of Snoke’s assets was your task, assigned by me.” 

“And I can show you an extensive report on my efforts thus far--”

“I don’t want to see reports, I want results, and we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about Crait--” 

“We’re talking about Crait, yes, in the sense that we are on Crait for financial reasons. Perhaps if I understood your objection to having an operation there--” 

Ren walks around to the other side of the desk, closing in on Hux, whose fear becomes less jumpy agitation and more absolute terror. He straightens his back and faces Ren, either not trying to hide the pleading fright in his eyes or unable to when he’s so certain that it’s him and not his desk that’s about to be thrown through a wall by Ren, despite Ren’s failure to strangle him when he was in a less passionate mood. 

“You know why I’m objecting,” Ren says, grinding this out with his face close to Hux’s. The connection prevents him from so much as grabbing Hux’s shoulders to shake him. It’s singing in Ren’s chest, thrilled to have Hux so near again at last, his quivering proximity filling Ren with an irrational sense of victory. 

“Ren,” Hux says, relaxing slightly and glancing toward the door. “I really, ah. If you’d just attend one our financial meetings, sir. You would understand that this makes sense. No one is asking you to personally oversee our efforts there, you-- You’ll never have to set foot there again, of course, Supreme Leader. If that is your wish.” 

Ren wants to throttle him. To bite his neck and then tell him no, that he cannot talk rationally about this and expect Ren to listen. He hears himself breathing and feels Hux breathing, too. It’s lulling Ren into something like a trance, just this: Hux inhaling, exhaling, beginning to believe that Ren didn’t come here to hurt him. 

“I have to get away from you,” Ren mutters, unintentionally aloud. 

“Sir?”

“Nothing-- Never mind. Do not build on Crait. No new structures shall be erected there to serve the salvage operation.” 

“Absolutely not.” Hux’s eyes have widened. His energy is unsure, nervous but hopeful. “We’re using only what we already have there, what we were able to save, mostly the ship-making facilities that survived--”

“Fine,” Ren says, and he walks out, feeling as if someone has their hands around his throat. 

 

**

Alone again in his quarters, he paces. He feels haunted, also heavy in his steps and incapable of making even a simple decision or remembering whether or not he’s showered since the last time he went to Hux’s rooms. Everything in him tells him Hux is the solution, that it worked before, when he truly gave himself over to it, but this is the kind of dark energy that must be starved, not fed. 

He reminds himself how right it had felt with Rey at his side, before Snoke laughed at them for thinking he wasn’t behind all of it. Even after they knew the truth, when they slaughtered Snoke’s guards together, it was such a long-sought relief to fight alongside someone who trusted him to give everything he had to their shared effort to prevail. Speaking to her from across the galaxy had been much the same, a seeming sign that he wasn’t really alone. In his bewitched confusion he had been sure that only she could help him move forward from the moment when the prison that had held him since Snoke found him was smouldering in ruins around him at last.

And then it was gone in a snap of her fingers, just as this profound-feeling pull toward Hux will be when Ren snaps himself out of it. The bond has come loose from his grip and it’s manipulating him, untethered without someone like Snoke holding the reins. So who does hold them? Not Hux. He’s ensnared by this thing, too, just as Rey was when she had fabricated visions of Ren’s future fed to her by Snoke. Hux of course can only see this as a desperate foothold in his long struggle against Ren, but he must be ashamed of himself, too, when he thinks of how they were together: like animals, and now howling for each other from opposite sides of the ship. 

But Hux isn’t howling, at least not in Ren’s visions of him. He’s placated by their meeting, anxious to have Ren in his bed again but happy enough to have seen him at all. Like some lovesick child. He’ll be of no help in untangling this; he’s too desperate to have what he thinks Ren can give him. His opportunistic offer to climb onto Ren’s dick has only made things worse.

Ren doesn’t want his Knights to see him like this. If they do, all will be lost. But without them he can’t undo it. 

The connection tells him he could go to Hux, clear his mind by tending to the demands of his physical body, then call on the Knights with the restored, commanding energy of a freshly worshipped king. He knows better than to trust this impulse and grits his teeth against it. 

However, in fairness: does he know that? Snoke taught him to deny himself in all things, to be an unquestioning servant. Ren can’t help but apply this philosophy to anything he wants even in the absence of Snoke, especially after the last thing he tried to have solely for himself resulted in the destruction of his grandfather’s lightsaber and waking up abandoned, lying at Hux’s feet.

He’d awakened there with the familiar, sickening feeling that he was in danger while he lay vulnerable. That someone was drawing a weapon on him like a coward, preparing to take advantage of an opportunity that might not come again. It’s very possible that Hux was doing so, or at least thinking about it. Any respectable adversary would. They never pretended they wouldn’t kill each other if they had the chance. 

Only Ren had that chance, had Hux’s throat crushed in his grip, and didn’t tighten his fingers enough to bruise, let alone kill. He didn’t even let Hux die when the Katalonians almost did the job for him. All this before their Force bond, when his need of Hux was purely administrative. 

He has to relearn how to make decisions. That’s all. The Knights will help in this endeavor.

He puts his head in his hands, a posture never taught to him by any master but one that has always come naturally and which provides a measure of defeated cold comfort. He’s seated now on the floor near his bed. A broken, mouthless thing that’s bigger than his real voice almost calls to the Knights without his full permission. There’s something traitorous within him that wants them to see him like this: having overtaken Snoke’s throne and so lost in the having of it that he can barely take care of himself, let alone all he’s inherited through bloodshed. 

Again. Just as some of his Knights had surely expected: again, once he got what he thought he wanted. That it would come to this.

You were right, he could say. Look at me, you were right. Now let’s start over.

But that’s the past, and he doesn’t want to acknowledge it, much less pretend it can be undone.

He slumps over onto the floor in a half-sleep without even realizing it, worn to tatters by this problem and hating himself for not being able to solve it alone. This kind of unguarded sleep has never been good to him: dreams come in swiftly like daggers. He sees Skywalker’s hateful eyes in the dark, freezing him in place. The ground Ren stands on gives way beneath him, and he falls into blackness, icy water shocking the breath from his lungs. He’s fighting, trying to swim. Something above him is on fire, bits of burning stone dropping into the water around him. 

Snoke’s bony hands emerge from the depths as if the raining debris has awakened him. Both hands wrap around Ren’s neck and drag him down into the nothing place where Ren sent him with Vader’s lightsaber. 

Ren can feel other things wrapping around him: legs, arms, vines, branches, everything once alive that he obliterated. It’s reclaiming him, enveloping him, welcoming him with cackling, deafening laughter into the void he’ll never escape.

He wakes grabbing for his lightsaber and stumbles up into a crouched fighting stance, saber ignited and mouth still open around the scream he may or may not have voiced while twisting helplessly against those bonds in his dream, knowing that Skywalker was overhead, above the water, watching Ren get what he asked for. 

No, but. That’s not real. He powers off the saber and turns in circles: checking, making sure he’s still alone. His droid is motionless against the wall, a small yellowish light on its front panel blinking. Sleep mode. Ren didn’t manage to disturb its rest.

Hux is disturbed, however, in this room two decks above. Ren can feel it as he backs up against the wall and presses his bare hands to the durasteel, trying to calm himself with something solid. He closes his eyes and sees Hux, not in anything so nefarious as a dream but in a vision, as he is right now: twisting upon his bedsheets, frightened. He’s agitated by the blurred sense of Ren’s nightmare that broke through his stimmed sleep via their connection. He’s hard, too, just because his discomfort has to do with Ren at all. Not quite awake, still dozy from the stim haze, but beginning to regain consciousness as he rolls onto his belly and rubs his cock against his mattress, writhing and wanting Ren so badly. 

Ren hears himself whine with sympathy when he feels it hit him directly in the center of his chest: Hux is alone, too. They needn’t be, either of them, as long as the other is alive. 

That’s what Ren feels as he walks in a near delirium toward Hux’s room: alive, he’s alive. It’s like he forgot, and like Hux also being alive means so much, suddenly. It’s the sign he’s been looking for. The Force bond cheers him on with agreement that feels symphonic, reverberating outward from the core of him and along every bone in his body. 

The lift takes too long. Ren paces aboard it, breathing through his nose and wishing that he’d just blown a hole in the two decks above his room and leapt directly upward with the Force to reach Hux faster. He can see Hux again, or still: Hux waking gradually in desperate confusion, grabbing for something. It’s lubricant, messy on his fingers and then down between his legs. Hux went to bed bare-assed, because he jerked off to thoughts of Ren before giving in and reaching for his usual stim, too frustrated to sleep without it even after coming. He’s wearing only that sweater that’s too wide at the neck, and it’s hanging fully off his right shoulder as he fucks himself with two fingers, legs pulled up against his chest and spread.

Ren is barely aware of his surroundings once he reaches Hux’s deck. He doesn’t care if he’s seen running or if some lewd-minded stormtrooper guesses why. He feels as if he or Hux or both of them will die if he doesn’t get there fast enough. More than that, he feels like a fool for waiting, not just for these past few cycles but for these past six years. In his mania it’s all clear: Hux has been a wrapped gift waiting to be torn open by Ren’s hands since he arrived here. Since they first passed each other in some anonymous hallway. Since Ren was born, found by Snoke, born again and brought here, where Hux is.

Distantly, he knows these feelings will fade after they fuck, when they wake fully from this trap that sleep thrust them into together. He doesn’t care. It’s enough to feel Hux needing him so much that it’s like the air in his rooms is made wholly of his moans when Ren enters, careful this time not to break the door. He’s going to fuck Hux so hard: whole squadrons would come running to his aid if they heard his shouts. 

Ren arrives at Hux’s bedroom in a slide, catching both sides of the open doorway to brace himself. Hux sits up and gapes at him, eyes already shining with gratitude, fingers still slick on the sheets. 

“You prepared yourself,” Ren says, stalking inside. He rips off his belt so urgently that he almost tears it in two. 

“Sorry,” Hux says. He’s able to grab two handfuls of the bedsheets now, mussed as they are from his writhing upon them. “I felt-- Felt you coming.” 

“Yes,” Ren says, not caring that he can’t steady his mind enough for eloquence. “No-- I mean, it’s good. I’m ready.”

Hux nods rapidly, mashing his lips together. Ren hears his desperate moan anyway, half-swallowed.

“Take that sweater off,” Ren says, tugging his own tunic over his head after issuing this command. “I don’t like it.” 

Hux hesitates, which is surprising, given everything else Ren is reading off his energy right now, which is that Hux would do anything and give up everything he has to get Ren inside him. 

The hesitation doesn’t last long: as soon as Ren starts working his pants open Hux pulls the sweater off and tosses it aside. Ren scans Hux’s chest for some new mark that he wanted to hide, but there’s nothing. He’s perfect, naked and waiting for Ren, legs spread, lips parted around his panting breath. 

Ren steps out of one leg of his pants, kicks one boot off, then can’t bother with the rest. He’s waited long enough. He crawls onto Hux with his pants clinging to one ankle, the boot beneath them still on. Hux opens his arms and pulls Ren onto him, whimpering for the shock of warmth when their chests press together. 

“Please,” Hux says. He’s holding Ren’s shoulders, rubbing his hard cock against Ren’s stomach and nodding frantically, like Ren’s whole body is asking him a question that he can’t say yes to hard enough.

Ren is already lining himself up. He shoves in fast because it seems like what Hux wants, needs. 

Hux shouts, arching: there’s pain in it, his eyes pinching shut. 

Ren freezes, something that’s not their Force bond shrinking with horror. The bond is telling him he hasn’t hurt Hux, and to please _please_ not disconnect from him. Hux is still holding Ren’s shoulders like he wants to keep him in place.

“Your back?” Ren asks. 

“No,” Hux says. He huffs, clenching. “Your dick.”

Hux opens his eyes and grins. Ren feels himself grinning, too, then laughing, or maybe that’s Hux. It shakes them both, anyway, jolting Ren’s cock inside Hux and making them both groan.

“You didn’t prepare yourself adequately,” Ren says, his mouth hovering over Hux’s.

“I did! Just, you. You’re big, it’s all right. Don’t stop, I’m fine. Just--”

Hux swallows the rest down. He seems more alert now that Ren is inside him, a sliver of apprehension cresting in his eyes. Ren tries to breathe evenly and remain motionless within him, because that’s what Hux meant to tell him, before he stopped himself from saying it out loud: just wait, just there, just this for a moment. 

“Were you dreaming?” Hux asks. His fingers tense on Ren’s shoulders. “I thought, I had, I don’t know, you were in trouble, or--”

“And your response to my being in trouble was to finger yourself in a frenzy?” Ren doesn’t want Hux’s commentary on his dreams. Surely he didn’t actually see that one. Just felt it. “Don’t worry about it,” Ren says. He feels Hux clenching up around him again. Hux is searching Ren’s eyes, also humping himself against Ren’s stomach in little twitches. 

“Do it,” Hux says, breathy and soft but still commanding. As if he can issue commands. As if Ren will obey him.

Ren does, this time: he pulls back, slow, holding Hux’s gaze like a promise. Hux wants it done? Here it is.

They both fall back into the mindless need that brought them here as soon as Ren starts fucking into Hux. They’re uncoordinated and desperate, fighting to find a rhythm and losing themselves to pure knocking-together friction in the meantime. Hux won’t be still and Ren doesn’t really want him to be. He likes the rabid way Hux snaps his whole body up to meet Ren’s thrusts, the way he moves his legs around on Ren’s back like he’s trying to get Ren deeper into him, and mostly how he loses his breath to astonished gasping encouragement when Ren’s cock haphazardly hits him just where he wants it.

“There, there, yes, _there_ \--” Hux pleads, clawing at Ren’s shoulders and back. He’s moving around too much for Ren to strike that spot every time, though maybe there’s more than one spot, because Ren is fucking into him wildly and without having any idea what he’s doing, grunting and trembling and already close to coming. Hux keeps on saying _there, right there_ , until Ren realizes Hux means his ass, generally, and that he just wants Ren to keep pounding and pounding into him. 

Ren does, harder and faster, the connection filling him with something like glory because he’s giving Hux wants he needs, he’s giving it so fucking good, he’s clearly amazing at this and Hux loves it. Hux comes as soon as Ren gropes for his cock, which does look small in Ren’s hand, both of them curling in to watch, open-mouthed, as Hux spurts and spurts over Ren’s big fingers.  

“Yeah, you needed that,” Ren says, smearing come onto Hux’s heaving chest after wringing him dry. “Need this, too,” he says, barely able to get the words out for how hard he’s slamming into Hux as he says so. “Don’t you? Huh?”

“Ren,” Hux says, all broken and sweet, fucked-out. 

Ren comes for that, feeling like he wants to give Hux something for it, and it’s this: his load, this avalanche pouring from his dick until he feels like it will drag his soul out with it. He falls onto Hux when it’s over, squashing him flat. Hux holds Ren against him as if he’s been waiting to disappear under the weight of someone bigger all his life, arms and legs wrapped tight.

It’s different from the dream, Ren thinks, his mind barely working, mouth open on Hux’s throat. This is like the inverse of the way that nightmare tangled around him, though he’s helplessly ensnared here, too. At least until he gets his breath back and regains the energy to move.

Hux makes little noises against his ear. They sound like approval, gratitude, and he’s got his palms pressed to Ren’s back, one fingertip moving in a mousy caress. It’s the finger the kidnappers broke, Ren realizes. He sighs against Hux’s skin and begins to remember who he was before he knew this immense, consuming relief. These recollections come to him as reasons to get up, to go. They irritate him, like First Order officers yapping about malfunctioning equipment and the diminished fuel supply. 

Ren ignores his concerns about lingering in Hux’s arms as if they were those same officers, easy enough to tune out and walk away from. He almost falls asleep on top of Hux, his cock softening and slopping out of Hux like an afterthought when Ren rolls off of him at last, onto his side. Turning away from Hux seems like enough of a concession to the Ren with some semblance of sanity who will wake here and wonder how the temporarily insane Ren could have let this happen. Hux doesn’t pursue him across the bed, just yawns and pulls the blankets onto himself, offering none to Ren.

Good. He doesn’t want Hux’s blankets or anything more from Hux beyond what he just got. He only needs to rest here until his muscles stop trembling with aftershocks of orgasm and his body feels mobile again. Then he will relocate.

Ren wakes up to the sensation that someone is stealing his shoes. Waking to anyone’s attention usually sharpens his need to attack, the memory of that first time it happened snapping him into pitiless battle mode. It did last time, when Hux stood over him in the throne room and then dared to defy his order. Now he can barely make himself care as he stares down at the end of the bed, where Hux is tugging off his boot, then his pants. 

“I didn’t want this in my bed,” Hux says when he sees Ren watching him. He throws the boot onto the floor, defiant. He’s still naked, hair wild.

Ren shrugs and falls asleep again. 

He wakes up not long afterward, or at least it seems that way, like not enough time has passed and like he would benefit from more sleep. Again, it’s Hux’s fault. He’s curled up against Ren’s back and is making miserable little bad-dream noises under his breath, shivering. 

This has got to be an act, Ren thinks, beginning to sink into the looming hangover of allowing himself to have Hux like that, and giving of himself like that in return. Without moving, he uses the Force to consult Hux’s treacherous energy. It tells him that whatever Hux is doing is not something he’s faking in a bad ploy to win Ren’s affection or pity. Hux is not even dreaming, though he’s not awake. There’s a flash of a sense memory that makes Ren think of how he found Hux huddling against the durasteel wall in the cell where his kidnappers held him, only in this vision Hux is much smaller and is wearing only short pants and an undershirt. He’s a child.

Hux sits up with a gasp, as if Ren has jabbed him with an elbow. Ren was thinking about it. Hux might have sensed as much via their bond. 

“Fuck, oh-- Sorry.” Hux moves away and gropes for the blankets. 

“Cold?” Ren says, wanting to mock him for this but still feeling sluggish. Real sleep like this has been so scarce for-- Well, years. He doesn’t want to abandon it yet, but Hux is having some kind of episode, naturally.

“You made me take off my sweater.” 

Hux is leaning over the other side of the bed, groping around on the floor for it blindly, not finding it. He could put the lights on, but Ren would be very annoyed if he did. Maybe Hux senses this, too, because he leaves them off and gives up looking for the sweater, cursing as he rearranges the blankets over himself instead.

“You have some attachment to that sweater?” Ren asks, now authentically amused. He rolls onto his back and turns his head to look at Hux. 

“No,” Hux says tightly. He’s staring at the ceiling and lying just out of Ren’s reach, blankets pulled up to his chin. “It’s just-- A botched lesson from my youth.” 

“The sweater?”

“No! The--” Hux gestures vaguely beneath the blankets, frowning at the ceiling now. “The thing, the, ah. Heat-seeking. I was-- When I was young, very young, before I knew better, I complained to my father that I was cold. We were on the _Authority_ , ha, that piece of shit. It was on its last leg, the entire Empire was, and they could barely spend enough fuel to keep the environs above freezing. I complained, like an idiot, and my father locked me in my room in my underthings. He took all the blankets, of course. Anything I might have used to keep warm. Have you ever been cold like that? For hours, just-- And when you’re young, when you don’t know when it will end?”

Yes, Ren thinks, staring at the ceiling now, too. But not so literally as Hux means. 

Hux snorts. “What am I saying, of course you haven’t. You’d just start a fire with the Force or something.” 

“That’s not how the Force works.” 

“Anyway, I survived, obviously. But I did think I was going to die of it, I really did. That chill, the hopelessness of it-- It’s never left me, stupid as that sounds. I can’t get warm. So don’t take it personally,” he says, voice sharpening. “You were just over there, with your-- Heat. My body gravitates toward it. I’ve always been like that, since then. I suppose it’s pathetic. Most of what he did to me really did make me stronger. Not that, though. That put something in me that I can’t shake off.” 

Hux seems to hear himself then. He stiffens under the blankets and presses his lips together, shuts up. 

“It’s like your bones get poisoned,” Ren mutters. He closes his eyes and sees that lightsaber. He’s hated the color green since then, mostly. Hux’s eyes are okay. 

“What?” Hux says after a while, softly. 

“Nothing. I should tell you, while we’re here.” As if they just happened to get onto the same lift together. “I’m going to call my Knights to the ship. They’ll help us find the Resistance. The girl is with them. She can’t go on hiding them from us if I have the help of the others.” 

“All six of them will come?” Hux asks. He sounds skeptical. As if he’s sensed Ren’s own doubt of this.

“Yes,” Ren says, and then, for some reason and unwisely, “Originally there were seven.” 

“Oh?”

Hux turns, first just looking over at Ren and then rolling fully toward him, onto his side.

What a thing to say. And to Hux, of all people.

“One died,” Ren says, already getting out of bed.

He stops in Hux’s bedroom doorway, because he forgot to put on his clothes before trying to leave, and also because he’s decided, in the strange clarity of this moment, that he should be honest with himself. There’s no reason not to be. 

The truth is that he liked that just now, almost as much as the wild fucking that came before it. Talking in the dark. Having someone confide in him despite all the reasons they know that they shouldn’t. He’d liked talking with Rey that way, too. So much that he almost got himself killed trying to hang onto it. With Hux it’s less dangerous. Hux is on his side of this war, if nothing else. 

“I’m going to do it now,” Ren says. 

Hux is still under the blankets, curled up on his side and watching Ren, curious. “Do what?”

“Call to them. So don’t disturb me.”

“Oh. You can do it from here? From my rooms?”

“Yes. Anywhere works. I just need peace and quiet, so don’t make a sound.”

Another truth he must admit to himself as he turns his back on Hux to do this difficult thing at last: he feels better, clear and calm and capable again. It was the sleep, also the fuck. Also Hux. 

They’re bonded: it’s an issue he will address at some point. For now, he’s confirmed that ignoring the bond only worsens its burdens. He won’t neglect it again. Tending it is too satisfying, and not in a way that leaves him feeling weakened after giving in to a temptation. It’s bigger than that, and he’s feeling newly confident as he settles to a seated position, naked on the floor near Hux’s sofa. The Knights will hear him and understand. They will come to respect him again when they arrive and see that he has changed.

He’s not the boy who cowered before Snoke and never dreamed that he could fight back. As Hux is the Starkiller, Ren is the Snoke Slayer. Not powerful enough to change the past, but wise enough to let it die along with all his old masters.

He invokes Duro, just as he relied upon him to convince the others that night when Skywalker’s school burned. He is no longer afraid or ashamed to be so bold as this. 

_As you have no doubt sensed, I have grown powerful enough to avenge our brother’s murder at last. Come to me at once and understand fully what I have done, and what we all must do now, together, as the time has come to claim our true destiny, unburdened by pretenders to our legacy._

He feels each one of them acknowledge and respond to the power in his message. It’s not the same as real trust and fealty, what they almost had for each other and what Snoke stole, but there’s an authentic curiosity in their response that means his mission is accomplished. They will all come at once to sniff around him and try determine what’s changed, what’s the same.

Sabin is the only one who dares a response. He would have been almost disappointed if she hadn’t, though he doesn’t like her question or its insinuation.

 _You have found a seventh ally_. 

_No_ , Ren answers, so forcefully that he grunts, as if he’s speaking these words at the back of his throat. _He’s nothing. A pawn_. 

_You are connected_. 

She must sense this because the Force bond flares so angrily, raging at Ren for saying this of Hux. 

_It will be explained when you arrive_.

 _Yes, Master_. 

He doesn’t sense sarcasm in this reply from her. That doesn’t mean it’s entirely sincere, but at least she’ll be here soon.

She’ll see then, who he is now. They all will.

Back in the bedroom, Hux has found his sweater and is sitting at his personal console wearing only that, pulling up _Finalizer_ schematics. 

“Done already?” Hux says, looking up. “Or am I making too much noise, gliding holo images through the air?”

“It’s done. They’re on their way. What are you doing?” 

“Just consulting the maps on the residential decks. You say six more people will be on my ship soon, and that’s going to take some rearranging of things.” Hux sighs, but he doesn’t sound beleaguered by this task. It’s the same fond sort of way Ben Solo’s mother would sigh when she had a house full of important guests and had to be charming yet stern while convincing them that some vague ambition of hers would bring peace to the galaxy if only they cooperated. “You see we’re a bit overbooked at the moment,” Hux says when Ren comes to stand behind him. “Considering we lost more lodging than crew in the recent, ah. Incidents.”

“They don’t need six separate rooms,” Ren says, trying to ignore his sense that Hux springing out of bed to do this for him means something. It shouldn’t; Hux is only doing this for his ship’s benefit. It is still his ship, really. 

“Even three rooms might be hard to come by,” Hux says, scrolling through deck after deck of residences marked with red ‘occupied’ symbols. 

“I want them all to stay together,” Ren says, deciding so as he speaks. They’ll need that, after so much time apart, scattered to the winds by Snoke. By Ren, too. 

“Well--” Hux sighs again, now with some authentic annoyance. “That’s even harder to swing, Ren. We don’t have many quarters onboard that would accommodate six people, even if they’re the best of friends.”

“Mine will do.”

“Your what?”

“My quarters.”

“Oh.” Something in Hux dislikes this. Interesting. “They’ll be staying with you? Can you even fit another six beds in there, or is that not-- An issue?” Hux looks up at him, nose wrinkling. He’s pretending he finds the idea of Knight orgies distasteful rather than disappointing. He was thinking he’d have Ren to himself for a little while longer.

“I’ll stay here,” Ren says. “With you.” 

Their bond, still smarting and growling at Ren like an injured animal for his comment to Sabin about Hux, brightens at the idea. Hux does, too. Then he considers the wider implications and twitches his nose at the thought of having no respite from Ren and his whims, even in his own rooms. 

“Fine,” Hux says. “If that’s your order, Supreme Leader.”

“It is.” Ren puts his hands on Hux’s shoulders. To appease the still-sulking bond: “Where does it hurt?”

“Where does-- What?”

“Your back.”

Hux stares up at him, confused. 

“Here?” Ren asks, kneading Hux’s shoulders to demonstrate what he has in mind. 

“There, oh-- No, it’s. Lower.” 

Ren considers the logistics. “Turn around,” he says, spinning the chair so that Hux is facing him. “Straddle it.” 

Hux is slow to grasp any semblance of kindness, most of all from Ren. He’s suspicious of it, but he does as Ren asked, turning to grasp the back of the chair, giving Ren access to his injury. 

Ren pushes the sweater up so that it’s bunched around Hux’s shoulders, exposing his bare back. He runs his hands over Hux’s skin, pressing here and there. Pretending this is like a medic exam. The bond floods him with euphoria, like he’s just slain an entire band of well-trained enemies and is riding the high of survival, bloodshed, victory. It’s the closest he’s known to this feeling like he can do anything, like he is singularly amazing. Which is curious. 

“There,” Hux says, flinching when Ren finds the tender place with his fingertips. It’s to the right of Hux’s spine, on his lower back. Hux hugs himself against the chair and makes indignant, pleasured noises under his breath when Ren rubs him there. 

“What’s this?” Ren asks, tracing an old scar with his other hand. It’s higher, under Hux’s left shoulder blade, long and thin. “Your father?”

“Hmm? Oh, no, that’s from the Academy.” 

“They whipped you there?”

“No, not as standard practice. A senior cadet terrorized some of us. It wasn’t a whip, that-- It was a piece of wire. I don’t even remember what I did to make him decide I deserved that, probably ate the last sesame bun in the mess hall or something. I remember it bled like a bitch, ruined two shirts. My friends and I made sure he got into an accident, eventually. At the end of that first year, just before his graduation.” 

“You had friends?”

“Shut up. Well.” Hux shifts into Ren’s touch and sighs, shoulders relaxing again. “Maybe it’s an exaggeration to call them that. Our loyalty to each other didn’t survive our own graduation. I’ll put it that way.” 

“Did you rub your dicks together to celebrate the vanquishing of your enemy, at least?” Ren asks, not sure why he’s so annoyed by this story, pressing too hard on Hux’s sore muscles now. 

Hux grunts as if he likes the extra pressure. “As a matter of fact,” he says, muttering. He turns toward Ren, resting his cheek on the back of the chair. “How did you know? Read my mind?” 

“No, you’re just predictable.” 

Hux turns his face against the chair again, muttering something. 

“What was that, General?” Ren asks, grabbing him with both hands, by the waist. 

The thrill Hux gets from being grabbed like this is unmistakable. “Nothing,” he says, voice small. 

“Turn around.” 

Hux turns, moving awkwardly, the sweater dropping down over his back. It’s pushed up just enough in front, the hem draped around his dick. He’s gotten hard from Ren’s rubbing on his back. Also predictable. 

“What’s that,” Ren says, nodding to his erection.

“Seems to be my cock, Ren.” 

“I won’t tolerate your insolence.” Ren taps Hux’s cheek sharply with two fingers. It’s one of those things that elicits from Hux an instant burning hatred coupled with blinding, jaw-clenching arousal. Ren files that away. “Answer me properly.” 

“That’s-- I’m. Erect, sir. As you can see. I apologize if this is not to your liking, presently.”

Ren smirks. “I’m okay with it. You like it when I touch you like that?” Gently, he doesn’t need to say. As if you’re some sacred thing. 

Hux blinks, nods. “Yes.” 

“You like having your Supreme Leader’s hands on you.” 

“Yes.”

“It makes you feel special?”

Hux resents this question. There’s a partial nose twitch. “Yes, sir.” 

Ren cups Hux’s face: gentle again, tilting it up toward his. “Are you the Supreme Leader’s special boy?”

Hux likes this better, exhales sharply through his nose. “I-- If you wish me to be, sir.” 

“My good boy,” Ren says, just to drink up how much Hux loves those words. Hux leans into the praise with his whole body, eyelids lowering. “You even changed your hair for me,” Ren says, running his fingers through it.

“I-- I didn’t, it’s-- Just a different product. Lighter.” 

“Did you go to your barber droid and tell it to use this lighter stuff so that Supreme Leader could stroke your hair the way you like?”

“I--”

“Or did you tell it you needed this change so Supreme Leader can grab a handful when he fucks into you so hard that your hair falls over your forehead?”

Hux is speechless, wanting, his dick leaking between his legs as they spread around the seat of the chair.

“You have work to do, General.” Ren nods to the holo images floating over Hux’s console. Hux has gotten five new messages from First Order personnel since they began this chat. “Go on.” Ren takes the back of the desk chair and turns it around, slowly, so that Hux is facing his console, still spread open and hard. “Do your work, then come to bed and claim your reward.” 

Ren stretches out in bed and strokes his cock as while Hux works, using lots of lube so that Hux can hear every squish of his palm along the shaft. Hux keeps getting new messages in response to the ones he’s answering. Ren can hear him breathing in petulant little huffs every time a new one arrives. He can feel Hux’s straining arousal, his drooling need for Ren’s dick, as if he’s not still sore from just having it hours ago. 

“Done,” Hux says, breathless when the inbox is finally empty. He spins around toward Ren as if he’s afraid to keep looking at the screens, afraid a new message will appear and ruin his progress. “Sir.”

“Then come sit on your throne,” Ren says, thumbing at the engorged head of his cock while Hux watches. “Grand Marshal.”

That pulls Hux’s gaze from Ren’s dick and up to his face. Hux opens his mouth, then doesn’t dare the question, stumbling toward the bed instead.

He eases himself down onto Ren, his expression so blown open with wonder at being teased with the title he wants that he seems to barely register Ren is inside him until he’s almost in to the hilt. Ren stays motionless, folds his hands behind his head and lets Hux all do the work. Hux only manages to lift and lower himself onto Ren twice before he can’t help himself and starts babbling.

“Can I really, ah, is that, my title, are you really--” 

“Show me you deserve it, Armitage.” 

Hux groans and rides Ren like it’s his job, head thrown back in real ecstasy as he fights the urge to ask Ren to say it again, wanting to be called _Grand Marshal_ while Ren is this deep inside him. 

Ren puts that aside, saves it for later. They have so much time. No one truly threatens them, with Snoke and Skywalker gone.

“Get that good spot, yeah,” Ren says, not even sure his words will reach Hux as he angles himself perfectly and slams down on Ren where he needs it most, again and again, gasping and wordless, bent back in a bow and even liking the ache in his back just now, just like this.

When they’re done, Hux climbs off and flops onto his side, exhausted. He’s turned toward Ren, eyes closed. Ren leans onto him and reaches down to feel his wet, loosened hole, probing around the rim with two fingers. Hux whimpers and presses into the touch. He’s sore, but he likes this. Having his sore spots touched.

“Overflowing with gratitude,” Ren says, murmuring this against Hux’s hot cheek. 

“Yes, sir,” Hux says. Mindless, reeling, thinking about that title, wondering if Ren will let him make the announcement as soon as they leave this room. 

Ren can imagine what the rest of the First Order will suspect when they find out that he’s moved into Hux’s rooms just before promoting him. They’ll think Ren is in here using Hux as a footstool, making him crawl around and lick boots while wearing a collar. Ren can hardly believe the truth of it himself, though he can’t deny he does enjoy making Hux feel ridiculous, small, owned. 

He also can’t deny that he doesn’t move away when Hux, fast asleep with his hands tucked between his thighs like a kid, nudges his face closer, closer, until his cheek finds the heat of Ren’s chest and a sigh of relief moves through him, so pure that Ren feels it warming his bones, too. 

 

**


	3. Chapter 3

Ren has not suffered stomach pains due to anxiety since childhood. Even when he first walked into Snoke’s throne room he did so with nerves of steel, certain he was making the right choice. 

What’s happening now must be Hux’s nervous energy leaching into him through the bond, though Hux appears stoic and is curious enough about the Knights that he’s standing at Ren’s side in the command shuttle bay as the first ship approaches. Hux was not invited to join Ren for this occasion, but Ren has no plans to send him away. Let the Knights see upon arrival that their master is entangled in a Force bond that he will need their help undoing.

“That’s got to be one of yours,” Hux says, craning his neck when a blip appears on the navigational console they’re monitoring. “What sort of ship even is it?”

Ren doesn’t answer this inane question or even look in Hux’s direction. It makes no difference what type of ship they’re piloting. There are two of them aboard: Cort and Edalli. Of course they’ve come first, and of course they’re together. Ren had sensed already that they never parted.

“They’ve not hailed us,” Hux says, his irritation with Ren’s silence evident in his tone as well as his energy. “Shall I reach out to them, or will that scare them away?”

“Nothing scares them now,” Ren mutters, because Snoke is dead. He glances at Hux and weighs whether or not he should order Hux to leave, or at least to be silent if he’s going to bear witness to this reunion. Hux likely wants to hail the ship just so he can announce himself as Grand Marshal of the Fleet. He’s found approximately a thousand excuses to describe himself thusly over the past two cycles, since Ren shrugged at Hux’s pestering about the sincerity of his promotion. Ren has gathered that Hux invented this title for himself. 

Ren can’t object to that. When he named the Knights of Ren he was working from a combination of his own vanity and a more familiar terminology, same as Hux.

“This is the Grand Marshal of the First Order speaking,” Hux says, predictable as ever when he hails the incoming ship without Ren’s direct permission. “You are approaching the _Finalizer_ , the Order’s flagship. Identify yourselves at once.” 

“They don’t have to identify themselves,” Ren says. Only their bond prevents him from grabbing the back of Hux’s collar and yanking him away from the console he used to make this insulting demand. “Tell them the Supreme Leader has given them permission to land. At once.”

Hux leans over the console again, eyes on the monitor, nose twitching. “Belay that,” he says, speaking into the comm signaler. “Supreme Leader Ren has given you permission to land, unidentified vessel. Welcome aboard.” 

“You added things,” Ren says when Hux straightens to give him a dry, tight-lipped stare. “If I ask you to say something, say it exactly.” 

“Yes, sir,” Hux says, wanting to kill him. Ren enjoys the feeling; it lightens his tension. “Forgive me for overstepping.”

Ren dismisses Hux’s insincere apology with a wave of his hand that makes Hux flinch, as if Ren was preparing to throw him into a wall. Something like embarrassment seems to heat the roiling waters already tossing about in Ren’s gut, and he walks away from Hux, toward the viewport. Soon the craft his first two arriving Knights will be visible there, by the naked eye. He can feel them already. Cort and Edalli are the two he’s least concerned about facing after all this time. They’re only alive and moderately intact because of Ren, and they’ve never forgotten it. 

Once he can see their ship approaching he feels a kind of fragile calm trying to ease into his breathing. These two at least will always be on his side. 

Of course: Snoke once assumed as much about him.

They arrive and are brought through the security airlocks by a pair of stormtroopers. Hux comes to stand at Ren’s side when the bay doors open. He’s nervous now, too: Ren can feel it, and it’s a relief. Too much of one. Ren steps away from Hux, toward his Knights.  

They both wear the same helmets Ren remembers, and their robes are similar, if not the exact old ones he knew them to wear. Cort is the only one of the Knights with two distinct eye holes in his mask, an irony Ren can appreciate if not entirely understand. Both show only a black void, according to the mask’s design, and the left one would regardless. He and Edalli both hold the weapons Ren remembers: Cort a staff with an axe blade studded with two broken crystals, Edalli the kyber-powered flamethrower that is welded to her right arm.  

“A long time since we’ve seen your face, master,” Edalli says. 

She means to ask where his helmet has gone, and maybe about the scar. 

“I’ve no more need of it,” Ren says, surprised by her boldness. But she was always harder to corral than Cort, loyal to him first in a way that made Ren watch them both closely for a time. The details of their ordeal under Snoke before he and the others arrived are still murky to him, once kept from him by Snoke and therefore probably always obscured. Cort and Edalli were both near dead when Ren met them, huddled together in a defeated agony in the corner of Snoke’s throne room. 

_A couple of failures, these_ , was Snoke’s introduction for them, one bony hand flicking indifferently in their direction. 

They had both flinched at the gesture, Ren remembers now.

 _Whoever impresses me most may have them as servants and do with them what they wish. Even once broken, a Force sensitive can always be useful._

It was a warning to Ren and the five other ex-students of Skywalker who stood behind him. Ren didn’t take it seriously enough, even as he tried and failed not to look again at the cowering remains of Snoke’s previous two apprentices. He could feel the renewed fear of everyone standing behind him spiking to a point that almost made his stomach pitch, with the exception of Sabin. She was angry.

“Master,” Cort says, with an unspoken but unmistakable hint of apology for Edalli’s greeting. “It is an honor to be in your presence again.”  

“Especially in light of your recent deed,” Edalli says. She sends an apology Ren’s way, too, sweetened by a sincerity he’s missed dearly. “We who are forever in your debt already cannot express gratitude enough for the--”

“Enough,” Ren says sharply, before she mentions that he killed Snoke himself. Hux almost certainly knows anyway, but Ren doesn’t want it said out loud just yet. _Speak to me through the Force in his presence_ , Ren instructs, sending this command to both his Knights. 

_Forgive me_ , Edalli sends back, bowing. _My sense of him was confused_. 

_His energy runs parallel to yours_ , Cort says, passing this along to Ren as if it’s a warning that there’s a stowaway hiding aboard his ship. _I didn’t notice him as distinct from you at all when we first stepped into this room, master_.

 _It’s a problem_ , Ren acknowledges, hoping they won’t feel the extent of his alarm. He glances over at Hux, who is peering at the Knights as if they’re a couple of rank creatures who will soon be running amok in his well-ordered world. _We’ll address it together, soon_.

 _Can he not hear us communicating this way, through your connection to him?_ Edalli asks. 

She’s confused, so Ren forgives her second-guessing. 

_He’s not Force sensitive_ , Ren responds. _More on this later. Go to the quarters I’ve prepared for you and await the others. Follow my sigil and you will find your place onboard here._

Cort and Edalli bow in tandem before leaving, unaccompanied by the stormtroopers who brought them from their ship. They can find their own way to their new home, aided by Ren’s connection to them. 

Hux is staring at Ren, brazen. Ren keeps his eyes on the now-closed doors of the shuttle bay until he can’t take Hux’s needling desire to ask some question any longer.

“What,” Ren says, jaw tight. 

“Nothing,” Hux says. There’s something smug in his energy that Ren doesn’t have the patience or interest to parse right now. “I thought they’d sound like you used to, is all.”

“No.” Only Sabin uses a vocoder in her helmet. She did so even before Ren did. She might think, not entirely inaccurately, that he stole the idea from her. They both stole the idea from Vader, of course, and Duro had been the whole who drew the mask for them in the dirt with a stick, pointed to the mouthpiece and explained what it would have sounded like. 

“Oh, here’s another,” Hux says when a second ship blips onto the monitor behind them. His jaunty tone sets Ren on edge even more than he is already. “Will they all come in pairs?”

“Enough questions. I’ll have silence from you or you’ll be escorted away.” 

There’s nothing left of Hux’s smug jauntiness once he’s heard this, particularly because the two stormtroopers flanking the bay’s doors heard it, too. 

Wyn is the third Knight to arrive. She’s alone, as all the rest will be. Ren would have guessed this even before he sensed it and knew for sure. Ilar will come next, then Farnik. Sabin will be last.

 _Your destiny is fulfilled_ , Wyn judges as soon as she’s through the bay door, the stormtroopers who tried to escort her stumbling backward because she objects to their proximity. She’s wearing her old helmet, too, and it shines with the luster she infuses into it, into everything. _Skywalker and Snoke, both dead._

 _But not gone_ , Ren admits resentfully, knowing she’ll understand that he’s only speaking of Skywalker. Wyn has always understood him with ease, but this is her skill with everyone. Ben Solo was infatuated with her before came to truly respect her and put that foolishness aside. She has no interest in sex or romance even with her own people, let alone humans. 

_Skywalker has reached out to you from beyond this realm?_ Wyn asks, already knowing the answer.

_Not yet._

_We will be here with you if he manages it. To face him with you._

_Yes._

Ren wants to sink to his knees and hug her legs. Like a stupid kid. Her energy is pure relief to him after all this time, complicated but not tarnished by the old hatred. He’s not yet ready to leave her company when she understands that he wants her to join the others and goes without needing to be asked. Ren lets her go. He finds that he wants Hux to ask questions when she’s gone, or to at least say something. 

Hux is bitterly silent, staring straight ahead when Ren glances at him, arms locked behind his back. The bond makes it hard to resist the kind of gushing Ren is suddenly inclined to do: _she has hair like yours, in her culture it was thought that this coloring meant a child had been blessed by a particular goddess, she’s not angry with me, could you tell?_

Hux senses Ren’s attention through the bond and steadies himself against responding to it, not deigning to even look in Ren’s direction. 

It’s for the best: Ren shouldn’t and won’t say any of that, and another ship is approaching already.

As he predicted, it’s Ilar. His presence offers a different but similarly intense relief, and Ren begins to believe that he was a fool to doubt their loyalty or think they would come here set to defy him. Ilar is like a phantom under his heavy hood, as ever, lekku concealed by the sheaths that hang from both sides. He takes his broadsword from his back and places the tip against the floor of the room, bowing to Ren. 

_Rise_ , Ren sends and Ilar obeys without responding verbally or otherwise. He has always been succinct in all forms of communication. Ren tried to emulate him in this in the past, with mixed success.

Farnik is close on Ilar’s heels, using the Force to open the bay doors after blasting the stormtroopers aside in the landing bay, rejecting their company much less gently than Wyn did. 

He’s the first one giving off an anger that seethes into Ren’s gut, too. Ren feels his jaw clenching with answering aggression at Farnik’s posture, gait, presentation. He’s the youngest of all of them, only twenty-one years old now. 

“What’s that weapon,” Ren asks, nodding to it. It’s the first time he’s spoken aloud to a Knight since Edalli addressed him.

“Something new,” Farnik says, lifting it and holding it across his chest. It’s a folding, sectioned chain of sword-blades that separate and eject an energy blast similar to Force lightning. Badly made, according to Ren’s reading. Dangerous, unstable. Like his own weapon, modified recklessly when he wasn’t much older than Farnik. “But with the same crystal,” Farnik adds, his fear of Ren surfacing through his projection of cocky confidence. 

“I had no doubt you’d not found another. One of Snoke’s defeated guards had a weapon not unlike this thing you’ve devised. More advanced than your design,” Ren says, leaving the _of course_ only in his tone and holding Farnik’s gaze through the mask, feeling rather than seeing it. “I’ll bring it to you when our more pressing business is complete. Studying its design will help you improve your own.”

“Yes, master,” Farnik says. He bows his head, at least. “Thank you.” 

There’s a long stretch between Farnik’s departure to join the others and Sabin’s approach. Ren paces, disliking the fact that Hux is a witness to his growing agitation but still unwilling to send him away. Their bond is quiet, watchful, gathering information about Ren’s other connections. Hux himself is much the same.

Ren knows she’s coming. She would never stand back and watch the others assemble without her. But the wait is infuriating. He breathes in huffs through his nose and thinks of the last time he saw her. The fingerbone she wears around her neck. He looks up at Hux without meaning to. Hux looks away abruptly, pretending he wasn’t staring at Ren with vague concern.

Finally, it’s there: her ship’s slow-moving signature on the monitor. Now Ren is the one to wonder: what the hell is she piloting? It looks large, sleek, and his sense is that it’s some expensive trinket she stole or even purchased. The idea of his Knights using credits like common thieves is obscene, but he knows it’s happened. He’s felt it, and in the absence of his leadership, in his long exile from them, he couldn’t forbid it. He would have been cruel to try. Even Snoke used credits. Ren has never had to: he was in his parents’ employ, then Skywalker’s, finally Snoke’s. Now Hux manages his finances. 

He feels fairly insane by the time he’s standing and watching the bay doors part for Sabin. She makes no objection, physically or otherwise, to the stormtroopers who walk at her sides, cautiously now and giving her a wide berth after being thrown aside by Farnik. 

They move away from her and the doors close. Sabin stands facing Ren, wearing all her old armor and a few new pieces. She carries her tri-crystal semi-saber, unaltered. Her helmet is the one Ren helped her craft, just as she helped him with the vocoder wiring on his own. He’s always liked hers best. It most resembles the one Ren wore for years even in their absence, that face that replaced Ben Solo's until all trace of him was gone, mask or not.

 _Master_ , is all Sabin sends through their connection, bowing deeply after this address.

This display is twofold. She’s always been obsessed with protocol, for all her transgressions in recent years. Ceremony, tradition. She values these. 

The dramatic bow also feels like an insult. She’s showing him: this is what you wanted from us. Here is is. And asking: how does it feel.

Ren could read her thoughts, could skim her energy to confirm his suspicions about her intentions, but that sort of violation would destroy what little trust remains between them.

 _Stand_ , he commands. 

She does, snapping to attention with a military precision that impresses Hux, whose reactions Ren doesn’t want to feel right now. Face to face with Sabin’s polished mask, Ren knows she must be noticing his scar and how it’s similar to her own, only thinner and more delicately etched. She likely finds that fitting for him.

 _You were the only one who told me I could defeat him_ , Ren sends. _The only one who believed it, when even I could not_.

 _I am sorry to hear that no one else had such faith in you, master_. 

Ren ignores the insult lodged in that. _I berated and punished you for your faith in me_ , he sends instead. _Wasting years in self-doubt. You knew the truth. I acknowledge that now. Forgive me_.

It’s a command, but also an entreaty. Ren can only hope she still sees the core of him clearly enough to understand that it can be both.  

 _Of course_ , Sabin responds. _Like all of us, I am ready to discover what we can accomplish without that monster feeding on us_.

Monster. Ren thinks of Rey, his skin prickling. He reclaimed the term proudly when she lobbed it at him a second time. Sabin using it now, here, feels like a bad omen. 

He shakes it off. He is the one who must regain their trust. They can’t betray him: he believes that much. 

_I’m glad you’re here_ , Ren sends, wanting her to feel his sincerity. Needing her to.

 _As am I_ , she returns, bowing her head in a quick motion that Ren takes as something real. 

Ren invites her to join the others and she goes to do so. He considers that he should accompany her, that he might approach them as a group without allowing her to do so first, but reminds himself he must trust them. He must. Without them, what does he have left?

He turns to Hux, who is no longer pretending he’s fine with being silent. Hux’s mouth quirks with the effort of keeping shut, his energy surging with questions and concerns and the need to be alone with Ren, too. One officer sits at the monitoring console, and the stormtroopers who walked in with Sabin are still guarding the closed bay doors. 

“Permission to speak, sir?” Hux asks. It’s not deferential. It’s sarcastic, as if to point out that Ren’s demand for silence was unfair or unprofessional.

Ren considers the request. “No,” he decides. “Follow me.”

Hux’s anger flares, but he isn’t against leaving the area with Ren and having a discussion about the new arrivals elsewhere, though he suspects that Ren just wants to blow off steam by fucking him again. He’s not wrong about that. Ren wouldn’t be opposed to talking afterward, if Hux can wait. 

Before they can clear the doorway, the officer at the monitoring console stands, his alarm drawing Ren’s attention before he speaks. Ren stops so abruptly that Hux crashes into his back, following too close.

“Sir,” the officer says, still frowning at the console monitor as Ren approaches. “There’s another ship coming in, unidentified and unfamiliar to us.”

“I thought that was all of them,” Hux says, coming to Ren’s side and crowding in beside him at the monitor. 

“It was,” Ren says. “This is someone else.”

“Well, fire on them, then!” Hux says, barking this order at his officer, who reaches for the comm he would use to give the order to the gunners on standby.

Ren grabs the man’s wrist and holds it, glaring at Hux. 

“No,” Ren says. “There’s a Force user onboard that ship.” He can sense it, and even recognizes the energy signature, but not enough to put a name to it. 

“Maybe it’s that little friend of yours who killed Snoke,” Hux says. “In which case I would recommend we dispense with her while we have the chance. Sir.”

Hux keeps his face impassive in the presence of their inferiors, but his eyes are blazing, furious. The last time he hesitated to fire on a ship he was made to look like a spectacular fool. They lost a Dreadnought and Hux was dragged across the bridge by Snoke, in front of everyone. He’s thinking of that now, while Ren walks forward and squints at the viewport, waiting to see the shape of the unknown ship appearing there. 

“It’s not Rey,” he says, more to himself than to Hux. “It’s--” 

He trails off, concentrating. He’s met the person onboard that ship before. Of that much he’s certain. But there’s a haze over them, a kind of power that can’t be parsed. It’s something Ren has encountered before, but it ducks his concentration even now. Like a language he can perceive audibly but can’t understand. 

“Supreme Leader,” Hux says, approaching him. “Are you-- What is our plan, sir?”

“Let them land,” Ren says. “I’ll greet the ship personally in case of complications.” 

“Complications?” Hux is vibrating with rage now, barely able to speak for how tightly his jaw is clenched. 

Ren’s heart pounds when the ship becomes visible through the viewport. He doesn’t recognize it, though it’s some standard First Order craft, nondescript and functional, not a fighter. 

“They have no cannons,” Ren says. “What is that ship?” 

He turns to Hux, deferring to his expertise on Order machinery. 

“It’s an escape pod,” Hux says, now gaping at the viewport alongside Ren. “From the _Supremacy_.” 

Hux turns to look at Ren, his look of shock-blanked confusion mirroring Ren’s. For a moment they just stare at each other, their bond thrumming with irrelevant approval. 

“Hail them!” Hux says, turning to the officer manning the console. 

“They won’t respond,” Ren says with certainty. 

Ren is proven right. He opens the command bay doors and walks out through multiple security rooms, toward the landing dock. Hux stays behind to fruitlessly quibble with the officer over his hailing strategy before running after Ren. 

“What you doing?” Hux asks, darting into the exterior bay behind him. “Ren! Is this some threat, shall I call in reinforcements? Are you preparing to do lightsaber battle in my landing bay?”

“They don’t have weapons,” Ren says. “They’re-- Surrendering, but--”

“ _Who_ is surrendering?”

Ren’s reading of them keeps telling him they’re not alive, but that’s not right. It’s that they’re not human, maybe, or in a deep sort of meditation that hides their mind from his attempt to reach out.

Because it can’t be that a seventh Knight has come to him. No.

 _Originally there were seven_. Why did he allow himself to say so? What has he called back to them? But ghosts can’t pilot ships. What did Snoke _do_ , after-- But it can’t be him, Ren would have felt any remnant of him surviving, no matter how small or horribly reconfigured--

_Even once broken, a Force sensitive can always be useful._

No. It’s not Duro. Ren knows it as soon as the craft makes its landing on the other side of the airlock he’s standing before. 

He stands watching as the interior bay doors open to reveal the landed ship. It is an escape pod; Ren recognizes it now. It’s more basic than the one Rey stole when she left him for dead in the throne room, but it was kept on the same deck of the _Supremacy_. 

“The navigators,” Ren says, as the pod’s ramp opens to reveal them standing together at the top, towering so that their massive heads brush its ceiling. 

“Oh,” Hux says. He doesn’t sound relieved. The navigators have always unnerved him in a way that even Snoke didn’t. Ren used to enjoy sensing this when they were in the throne room together, as few of Hux’s other fears were so evident. “I suppose I thought they’d died,” Hux says, muttering this in the direction of Ren’s shoulder. “What do they want?”

Ren can’t answer that. He’s never been privy to an accurate reading of their energy in the Force, let alone their thoughts or motivations. He doesn’t even know what species they are, as he’s only ever seen them masked and robed like this, everything covered. As far as he knows, they were willing slaves to Snoke not unlike the guards Ren slaughtered with Rey. He watches them descend the pod’s ramp together with leisurely grace, purple robes flowing around them with a kind of liquid menace. He doesn’t sense that they’ve come for a fight. 

“I can’t speak their language,” Ren says, keeping his eyes on them while Hux does the same, half-reaching for his blaster. As if that could stop them. Ren isn’t even sure that he could kill them if he wanted to. They might dissipate into smoke if he tried to put his saber through them, only to reconfigure elsewhere. 

Or perhaps that is just his enduring fear about facing any foe since his confrontation with Skywalker.

Snoke never spoke of the navigators’ origins or any information about where their loyalty to him arose from. He only ever told Ren that they were to be left alone to do their navigational work, that they were powerful in the Force and not to be disturbed. As far as Ren knows, Hux was told the same.

Ren feels it like a sharp but pain-free spike through his mind when they reach out to him through the Force: in tandem, as if they are one being in two separate physical forms. Ren is pinned between the focus of their twin energies like a bug trapped between pieces of flimsiplast.

_...the oculus…_

“Destroyed,” Ren says, wincing against the intrusion. No one has forcefully entered his mind since Snoke died, unless visions of Hux jerking himself off and reviewing comm reports count. “Unless,” he says, gritting his teeth and trying to reorder his mind around their sudden presence within it. He looks at Hux. His eyes must be very hard, teeth bared, because Hux shrinks away from him, wide-eyed, as if he’s afraid Ren will hurt him, or that he’s been possessed. “Is it-- The oculus, from the throne room-- Is it on Crait with the rest of the wreckage?”

“The viewing scope?” Hux says, determined as ever to pointlessly rearrange Ren’s words. “No, it’s here, on the _Finalizer_. I had it inventoried into storage, in case-- That is, I thought it might someday be useful to study its technology. As such.” 

“Why wasn’t I told?” Ren asks, shouting this in Hux’s face. He’s not even sure why he’s this angry, except that there might be other artifacts Hux has squirreled away for his own study, thereby keeping them from Ren’s. 

Hux stammers, white-faced and shaking his head. “I thought-- I thought I had mentioned it, sir, during our, one of our inventory review meetings-- What’s--” Hux reaches for his own face, his finger trembling as he points to his left eye. “What’s that, ah, what’s happening there--”

_...resume, traveling, the oracle, young master, rest now…_

Ren hears himself moan with humiliating relief when the navigators withdraw from his mind. They move apart and glide around Ren and Hux, toward the open bay door. Ren feels Hux’s back pressing against his as the ghostly figures move around them, then he’s shoulder to shoulder with Hux again, watching them move through the command room beyond all the security doors that Ren left open for them.

“Where are they going?” Hux asks. He gapes up at Ren, and the relief that floods him when he meets Ren’s eyes is staggering. “Your eyes were white,” Hux says, lowering his voice. “Just now, for a moment--”

“They were speaking to me. It’s fine.” Ren isn’t sure about that, but he’ll find out. He looks up at the departing navigators. Hux does, too. “They’re going to the storage deck,” Ren says, sure at least about this. “To reactivate the oculus. I don’t think it was damaged in our-- When Snoke was killed.” 

“What do they want with it?” Hux asks. “I know they helped us move through the Unknown Regions when the Empire was on the run, but now-- Ren, what if they’re here to avenge Snoke? They served him before they served us. I’m trusting you’re only letting them aboard because you know you could easily overpower them if necessary?”

“It’s under control.” Ren gives Hux a warning look. “Have your officers remove the oculus from storage. Give them a workspace, one of the conference rooms with a viewport. As isolated from heavy-traffic areas as possible. They don’t need sleeping quarters.” 

“Are you certain--” 

“Do not question me again, Grand Marshal.” Ren didn’t intend to placate Hux with this title, but some of the color returns to his cheeks once he’s heard it. “Go and do as I ordered. Report to our quarters for a further briefing when your work on the bridge is complete.” 

_More like a de-briefing_ , Hux thinks, twitching his nose at Ren before turning to go. Ren snarls after him. He doesn’t like hearing Hux’s thoughts in such clearly isolated words. They’re typically more hideous than what he dares to say out loud, which is bad enough. 

Ren pauses in the hallway outside the control room after Hux has gone. A left turn would take him toward the lifts that would bring him to his old rooms, where the Knights are now gathered and awaiting his instructions. To his right is the hallway that leads toward the quarters he now shares with Hux. 

He considers the smartest course of action, heart rate elevating. Long have been the years since he personally commanded anything beyond a battalion of Hux’s troopers and officers. Now those same troopers and officers are his alone to command, but still he hangs back, isolating himself and issuing orders from afar. The Knights need a far more personal leadership. He can do it. He knew as much when he faced them each in turn. But perhaps not just yet.

On the way to his quarters he formulates a plan: he’ll sate the Force bond, which is prickling with irritated need after he frightened Hux with his apparently white-eyed stare when the navigators spoke to him. Once that is accomplished, with a cleared mind, he will go to his Knights. Best to give them some time to resume their bonds with each other regardless, before he presents them with the harder task of repairing their bond with him. 

In the quarters that were recently Hux’s alone, Ren paces and struggles to feel as if he isn’t just hiding from the next step with the Knights. He has a sense of their union strengthening again already but doesn’t prod at it with the Force, not wanting them to feel intruded upon just yet. There’s a sense, too, of the navigators investigating the oculus, caressing it like a lost child.

Where have they been since _Supremacy_ was blasted into pieces? Do they know Snoke is dead? They must. What do they want now, to serve Ren? He felt they were referring to him when they said _young master_ , but maybe only because he wants to believe that. 

It’s another in an always-growing list of issues he’ll need the Knights to help him reflect upon. The navigators were there when Ren first arrived on the _Supremacy_ with the others. This means Cort and Edalli have at least known of them longer than he has. Perhaps they have some wisdom in this area to impart. 

Ren hasn’t done much rearranging of Hux’s formerly solitary quarters yet, beyond installing Vader’s melted mask in a corner of the sitting room, adjacent to the mock-throne where Ren has fucked Hux twice now. The blue sofa has been pushed against the opposite wall to make room for Ren’s meditation and light training exercises. Hux objects to this but hasn’t said so aloud. He has only mildly objected to the sight of Ren’s grooming products piled haphazardly on the countertops in his fresher, by asking if Ren might like him to clear out a few drawers in which to store them. Ren said no. He likes them where they are.

Hux takes too long on the bridge, as usual, overstaying his scheduled active duty. By the time he finally shows Ren is antsy with a kind of cowardly cabin fever that he’s tired of being alone with. He crowds Hux at the door and pushes his greatcoat off, growling under his breath with the need of him and sniffing at his neck. He’s aware that he’s acting like a maniac. With only Hux to witness it, he doesn’t care. 

Hux sighs as if this attention is bothersome, but his energy swoons into Ren’s, as does his whole body when Ren presses him against the wall to further demonstrate the state he’s in by grinding his erection against Hux’s thigh. 

“You’re insatiable,” Hux says. 

Proudly, Ren notes. And while bumping his crotch against Ren’s hip, getting hard himself.

“Have my orders been carried out?” Ren asks, meeting Hux’s eyes hotly. 

Hux swallows and nods. “Yes, Supreme Leader. I--” 

“Good.” Ren hauls Hux off the wall and spins him around, starts backing him toward the bedroom. Hux stumbles, in a stupor at first and then with annoyance, trying to find his footing while Ren steers him like an engine-failed ship toward what he cannot deny is _their_ bed, now. 

“Careful!” Hux protests when his legs hit the bed and he falls onto it. There’s some pain at the base of his spine that sneaks into Ren through their connection, but it’s mild. Ren crawls onto Hux and starts working open his uniform tunic. The buttons down the front seem to multiply every time Ren undresses Hux with urgency. There are always more than he remembered. “I really did think we’d talk about our new passengers,” Hux says, his legs pulling up to clamp around Ren’s sides. 

“After,” Ren says, still working clasps open. He would use the Force to rip them all free in a single gesture if it wouldn’t scare the shit out of Hux. His Force-phobia persists. 

“After what?” Hux groans. “Look, Ren-- You can’t fuck me right now.” Hux bats his eyelashes sweetly when Ren looks up at him, somehow stunned by this refusal. “Not the way you most like to,” Hux says, still feigning a bashful demeanor. “I’m sore, all right? Since you lasted so long this morning. You have to give me a recovery time, I’m not used to this much-- Anything.” 

Ren exhales and nods, ducking his head down to Hux’s neck to breathe in the smell of him again. He feels stupid for not having anticipated this, but Hux is pleased enough by his understanding and still rocking up against him, clearly wanting something else. Maybe he thinks Ren will suck his dick. Ren has thought about it. He’s curious about what Hux tastes like, there and everywhere he hasn’t already put his mouth. He rubs his face against Hux’s throat, considering the possibilities and pleased that Hux mentioned how long he lasted this morning. 

They had been half asleep, moving against together in the dark as they both pulled slowly back to reality, stale breath on each other’s cheeks. Ren tugged Hux into his lap and prompted him to ride, then had a change of heart. He held Hux still on his dick, only nudging up into him in teasing, sleepy shunts. He touched Hux’s cock the same way, too slow and soft, lazily indulging himself, until Hux was trembling and begging for more, squirming on Ren’s dick and clenching around him like this might incite Ren into real thrusting. When Hux finally came it ran like a blinding shockwave through Ren’s body, too, Hux convulsing all around him and crying out in relief such that Ren blew his load instantly in response. 

It was nice, actually. Strangely peaceful, waking up that way. Ren lifts his face and peers down at Hux, who did do as he asked precisely: Ren can feel it. The navigators are pleased, working already on the restored oculus. He decides to give Hux a reward. 

“Fine,” Ren says, rolling off of Hux. He flops onto his back and spreads out his arms, his legs. “If you’re too fragile to receive me, find some other way to uncoil this tension.” 

He means in both of them. Hux sits up on his elbow, his uniform shirt undone except for the last two clasps. His gaze sinks down to Ren’s bulge, then pulls slowly back up to his face. 

“Permission to undress you, Supreme Leader?” Hux strokes the backs of his fingers over Ren’s cheek, affecting a mocking pretense of tenderness while something wicked pools in his eyes. 

Ren likes the combination. He nods.  

As soon as Hux gets onto his knees and starts working on his belt, Ren realizes he’ll actually prefer this right now: let Hux take the lead and work him over for once. Ren is drained and in need of tending, too worn thin to put his usual effort into impressing Hux. He’s also amused by his sense that Hux isn’t sure what he’s allowed to do or what he wants to do first, especially after he’s got Ren shirtless and spread out before him. He stares at Ren’s chest while working on his pants. 

“Yours, too,” Ren says when he’s lying naked before Hux, feeling a little overly exposed under his hungry stare. 

“Mine-- What?”

“Take off your clothes, Armitage,” Ren says, as dryly as he can.

Hux is pinked-up all over by the time he’s got his uniform tunic and undershirt off. He has an odd sort of pleased yet horrified reaction to his first name: pleased because Ren knows it at all and cares enough to use it, horrified because the authority with which Ren pronounces it reminds him of the way his father used to freeze his blood by barking it at him. 

Hux dresses down to his underwear and leaves those on. Ren finds this interesting, so he allows it. He wants to touch Hux but refrains, giving Hux an expectant look and waiting to see what he’ll do. Hopefully something more creative than cock-sucking, though Ren wouldn’t push Hux’s head away if he moved down to lap at him. Ren is hard enough already to be leaking a little at the tip. He grunts when Hux notices this and runs his fingertip through the slit, thumbing at the shaft and looking dreamy with all the possibilities. Hux is overwhelmed, too, at the invitation to have at Ren’s body like this. 

Ren has an idea. Something that might truly take his mind off of everything that awaits him on the other side of this interlude.

“That spot you have inside you,” Ren says, reaching into Hux’s briefs to grip one soft ass cheek as he says so. “The one that makes you scream--” 

“It’s commonly referred to as a prostate,” Hux says. He’s pressing back into Ren’s touch, his hand sliding over Ren’s chest. “And it needs a break, too, believe it or not.” 

Ren realizes then that Hux left his briefs on so Ren won’t be tempted by the sight of his bare ass and dive for his hole like an animal despite Hux’s request to leave it alone. 

Stupid. He should know by now--

“I’m not after yours, presently,” Ren says, rejecting the impulse to feel wounded. “I was thinking of mine.” 

Hux’s eyebrows go up. “Yours?” 

“Yeah.” Ren so enjoys surprising him. It’s like another kind of winning altogether. “Maybe you should find it. Repay some of the careful attention I’ve paid yours in recent days.” 

“You want-- You--”

“Your fingers will do, I think.”

“Right.” Hux sits up, his gaze drifting down to Ren’s thighs as they part more widely. “Yes, that can-- Be arranged.” 

“You know where the lube is.” 

“Ah, yes-- Are you clean?” Hux blurts, eyes snapping up to meet Ren’s. 

Ren has to suppress laughter. This is precisely the reaction he expected. 

“Yes,” he says, though it’s not as if he’s douched himself, or whatever Hux probably does. Hux is always fresh as a flower down there, unless he’s all tacky with Ren’s come. “You can wear a glove,” Ren says. “If you want.” 

Hux loves the idea, of course. He fetches the lubricant and a pair of the black leather gloves he wears with his uniform. Ren is tempted to ask if he plans to use both hands as he slides the left one on, then the right. 

“You’ve had this done before, I’m sure,” Hux says. He gives Ren a look that resembles the one he usually has on when he talks about how ‘the girl’ killed Snoke. 

“I’ve only done the other sort of fucking,” Ren says, leaving off the bit about having only done that with Hux. “This always seemed less dignified.” 

“And yet you want me to do it to you now,” Hux says, voice flattening. 

“You’ve made me curious. Your reactions are extraordinary. I want to see if you can pull that sort of screaming out of me. I suspect you can’t,” he adds, hurriedly, just so Hux knows for sure: this is a game he plans to win, not an invitation to actually reduce Ren to a shrieking slut. 

As if Hux even could.

“Have you at least done it to yourself?” Hux asks. He’s spreading lube on one gloved finger, possibly trying to issue some kind of warning that Ren doesn’t know what he’s getting into. Like having a finger up one’s ass is really so revelatory. 

“Seemed dumb,” Ren says, shortly. “So no.”

“Dumb?” Hux swallows a laugh and nods, lips pressed together. “I see. Well, I’ll be gentle with you, sir.” 

“No, don’t. Do whatever you like having done to yourself. Rough, I think. Is what you like.” 

They both know that’s not strictly true, but when it comes to getting fucked Hux can never seem to get Ren into him hard or fast enough, at least after the initial shock of taking him in. 

Hux pulls the cuff of his left glove back and releases it, letting it snap against his wrist. 

Ren can feel precome beading freshly over his cockhead in direct response. He wants to ask how Hux knew to do that. Hux lifts one eyebrow and pushes Ren’s left thigh up a bit higher on the bed, opening him wider. 

“You’ll feel some pressure,” Hux says, as if he’s a medic. “There shouldn’t be any pain.” 

“I can handle pain. Better than some people.” 

“Oh, be quiet. Just tell me if you want to stop. Some people hate it--” 

“As if I’ve ever hesitated to tell you to stop doing something I don’t like. Get on with it!”

Hux takes on a steely expression and brings his slicked fingertip to Ren’s hole. Ren’s shoulders jump at the sensation of even being touched there even lightly, his fists clenching at his sides. He should have known to brace for it. Hux hesitates to continue, watching his face, then rubs his finger in circles when Ren calms. 

“Just put it in,” Ren snaps, embarrassed by the way he jerked against that first touch. 

“We do this my way or not at all,” Hux says.

“You’re giving me an order?”

“Shhh,” Hux says, increasing the pressure of his single rubbing fingertip. “Just let me show you why it feels good. It takes some finesse. You won’t get the full experience if I just shove in.” 

Ren grunts doubtfully and closes his eyes. What Hux is doing feels good, admittedly.

Gradually, the tension remaining in Ren’s shoulders drains. He feels his lips parting, breath coming faster. Hux uses the excuse of Ren’s seeming surrender to close in on him, pressing himself along Ren’s side as he begins to ease his finger in a little at a time. Ren’s mouth opens wider. He clamps his lips shut, but with the first real inward slide of Hux’s finger they part again. 

“Good,” Hux says, soft and warm, near his ear.

“Shut up,” Ren says. His voice is sort of-- Compromised. It doesn’t even feel that good, this part. Just interesting. Weird, different. Whatever.

Hux is breathing harder, too, his energy as peaked and wild as Ren’s. Or maybe Ren is just so lost that he’s assuming what he feels is what Hux feels, too. Ren should tell Hux to get off of him. Compromised, he’s compromised-- And when he should be with his Knights, commanding, rebecoming himself, not here, not whining at the back of his throat when Hux finds what he was instructed to locate, that spot, that, that’s--

Ren makes a sort of wordless noise of strangled pleasure and shakes his head. Hux’s finger pulls back, goes still.

“There you are,” Hux says, so gently that there’s no mistaking that he’s mocking Ren, enjoying this in a way that Ren wants to forbid. “Just there. It’s quite intense at first, yes?”

“Fuck!” Ren has one hand fisted in the sheets, the other wrapped so tight around Hux’s bicep that he’s going to bruise. 

“Want more?” Hux asks, murmuring this into Ren’s ear like a spice dealer.

“Do what I asked you to!”

“Yes, Supreme Leader.”

Ren needs to stop this and throw Hux off of him, he’s sure of it, but he’s also clenching up around Hux’s finger, arching and tilting his head back, mouth open around an unvoiced exclamation he won’t allow to crawl up from the pit of him. He hasn’t had the nerve or energy or presence of mind to wrench his eyes open since this started. It’s so good when Hux slides his finger up and in and _there_ , when he rubs those little circles just right, too good, but at least Ren isn’t screaming. 

“This is how I like it best,” Hux says, his brazen mouth pressed fully to Ren’s ear now. He’s dragging his finger in and out slowly, pausing to lavish attention on Ren’s prostate for just long enough before another outward drag. “It’s that, that combination of intense pleasure and the friction on the rim. It’s nice like that, mhmm?”

Ren groans. He’s not sure he likes this _rim friction_ as much as Hux does, but the rest is incredible and he doesn’t want to try to form words right now, so he lets it go on until he needs his cock touched. He grabs for Hux’s other gloved hand and brings it to his dick. 

“You want to come?” Hux asks. He licks around the rim of Ren’s ear. Fascinated by rims of all kinds, it seems.

Ren nods and forces his eyes open, makes himself regain control of this situation as best he can. He turns his blazing look on Hux, attempting to transform this powerful desperation into something Hux should fearfully obey. 

“Pump me dry,” Ren grits out, already close. “You’re in so, so much trouble--”

“Me?” Hux has the nerve to fucking smirk, then to press his finger hard against that spot, destroying Ren’s ability to hold Hux’s gaze or keep his eyes open at all. Still, he doesn’t scream. 

He does come harder than he can ever recall doing since that first time inside Hux, shaking hard and spilling over Hux’s gloved fingers. 

“Please don’t punish me, sir,” Hux says, fake sweet and nipping at Ren’s ear as his orgasm winds down, Hux’s finger leaving him in a gentle slide that makes him shudder. “I tried so hard. You know I’m more accustomed to giving you other pleasures. I could get better at this.”

“Stop talking,” Ren says, turning his face toward Hux’s. He’s not sure what he was looking for when he did so, but it wasn’t Hux’s nose nudging at this cheek, nor his lips. If Ren was less tired he would shove Hux away. As it is, he’s formulating a plan. Ready for the tables to turn.

“I’ll fetch something to clean you with,” Hux says. He’s either really getting off on this or really wants Ren to think he is. Ren tries to catch his wrist before he can leave the bed, but he’s too sluggish, then not sure why he’s opposed to Hux cleaning him up. His chest is coated with his own spend, and he wants to be restored to himself before he does what he next has in mind.

Hux is walking awkwardly when he returns, still wearing his briefs and still very hard within them. He rubs a damp, lukewarm cloth over Ren’s chest, kneeling on the bed beside him. He’s removed his gloves, having cleaned them and tucked them away in a drawer in the fresher, presumably reserving these for potential future explorations of Ren’s ass. 

“You enjoyed ministering to me?” Ren says, reaching over to give Hux’s erection an unceremonious squeeze. 

“Ah-- Yes, I did, thank you--” 

“Thank you?” Ren snorts and sits up. He takes the cloth from Hux’s hand and pitches it onto the floor, holding Hux’s stare. “Get on your hands and knees.”

Hux hesitates, actually wondering if Ren remembers, or cares, that he can’t get fucked again just yet without pain. Ren darkens his stare, more annoyed than he should be by Hux’s distrust of him. The bond should at least tell Hux that Ren won’t hurt him, even if Hux is too dense to read anything else from it.

Hux turns onto his hands and knees, more anxious than afraid. Ren kneels behind him on the bed, grips the back of his briefs and pulls them down just enough to expose his ass, leaving his cock trapped in front. 

“Down on your elbows,” Ren says. He touches Hux’s back, expecting him to jump at the contact, but he’s not actually that tense. “Does it hurt?” Ren asks, rubbing his thumb over the sore place to the left of Hux’s spine. 

“No,” Hux says. He’s not lying; Ren can’t sense any discomfort from him. “It’s better, of late. I think it’s healed.” 

“Good. What if you put your head on the mattress.” 

Hux sighs and lets his arms slide out at his sides, resting his cheek on the bed and turning his face toward Ren. “Still fine,” he says. “What are you plotting back there?”

Ren is glad he asked. “A present,” he says. He grips Hux’s waist with both hands, gentle. In revenge for Hux’s doubt of him, he means to do this even more slowly and carefully than he’d originally intended. “Are you comfortable?” 

Hux sighs, fidgets. “Not especially, no.”

“Would you rather lie flat on your belly?”

“For what purpose?”

“Just do it.” Already Ren is struggling with the gentleness quotient. “It’s a surprise. Relax.” 

Hux moans in something like complaint. It’s meant to be cute, probably, or maybe it’s just his ass that seems cute like this, both cheeks propped up over his tugged-down briefs. They look especially springy.

“So you’re sore here,” Ren says, spreading him open. 

Hux makes a soft noise and squirms. He gasps when Ren leans in to kiss him over his hole, and again when Ren licks him there.

“Oh,” Hux says, catching on. He tries to open his legs wider, but his briefs won’t allow it. 

“Too sore for this?” Ren asks. 

“No, that’s-- That’s fine, that’s good--”

“Are you sure? Tell me the truth.” 

“I am! That’s, that’s nice, actually, that’s--”

“Helping? Feels good on your sore little hole?”

Hux shudders all over and buries a moan against the blankets. “Yes,” he says, voice muffled.

Ren sets to it in earnest then, not really knowing what he’s doing. Hux’s noises and Ren’s sense of the astonished, elated energy that rises from Hux are enough of an indicator that he’s doing well regardless. Ren gets hard again just from listening, and also because he likes the dirtiness of it, the way Hux writhes and whines and tries to keep himself from rubbing his cock against the bed, failing miserably in this. Between that friction and the attentions of Ren’s tongue, Hux is close to coming before long, stabs of need shooting down his spine and making Ren lick into him even more softly. 

“You want to fill these up, don’t you?” Ren says, squirming a hand between Hux and the bed. “Fuck,” he says, breathing this out when he feels how soaked the front of Hux's briefs are, how badly he needs to come. 

Hux is coated in a sheen of sweat, and his noises have sunk down to nothing more than the saddest little squeaks, almost pained. He keeps perfectly still in Ren’s grip, afraid that even the tiniest roll of his hips against Ren’s hot palm will set him off and earn him some kind of punishment. More than that, he just wants to be good. He wants to _perform_ for his Supreme Leader, to not fail. Ren wipes his mouth with the back of his free hand, contemplating. 

“Tell me why you deserve to come,” Ren says, already giving him a few light strokes. Just to see if he can take it. Hux’s shoulders are so tense. “State your case.” 

“I, I--”

“And don’t stutter.” 

“Ren,” Hux says, brokenly, as if begging will work. 

“Yes? I’m waiting.” Ren doesn’t actually care if Hux loses it and comes without meaning to. In fact that would be Ren’s preferred scenario. Seeing how long Hux can last is good, too. 

“Just-- I need--”

“Stuttering again.” 

“You made me feel so good sir I need to come now, _please_.”

Flattery. Too predictable. “But why do you deserve to. That was the question.”

“I-- Because I’m, I’m--”

“You’re what, Hux?”

“Your good, good boy--”

Ren was not expecting that. He scrambles to get his hand into Hux’s briefs, clumsily grabbing his dick via the left leg hole and pumping him hard, giving him unmistakable permission to come.

Hux almost sobs when he unloads in Ren’s hand, his face buried against the blankets and his hips jerking desperately. Ren feels inspired: he moves back to lick Hux’s hole, not softly now but hungrily. Hux whimpers and humps back against his mouth, shameless with need even as Ren tugs the last drops from his dick. 

Ren removes his hand from Hux’s ruined briefs and wipes it onto the sheets. They already had a droid change them this morning. Droids in the New Republic occasionally gossiped about such things; Ren suspects First Order droids are programmed otherwise. 

He doesn’t care either way. He’s imagined already what people might be saying, that Hux must have swallowed so much of Supreme Leader’s come already to get his new title. That his knees must be aching from all the kneeling. Fine by Ren if they think so.

He’s still hard, so he slides up behind Hux, slotting himself into the cleft of Hux’s ass. Hux is all trembly with relief, loose limbed in Ren’s arms. 

“You liked that,” Ren says, humping himself on the swell of Hux’s ass.

“How could you tell,” Hux mutters. He laughs at his own stupid joke, and he’s still got a smug smile at the corner of his lips even after Ren bites his shoulder. “Must you sink your teeth into me?”

“It didn’t hurt,” Ren says, dragging his thumb over the pale pink mark he left on Hux’s skin. “You know I can feel it. When something hurts you.” 

Hux stiffens and comes back to himself, hearing this. He turns his cheek toward Ren and meets his eyes. “Does it go both ways?” he asks, fearful. 

“I don’t know. I have a high threshold for pain, and no one here can hurt me, anyway.” 

“Oh?” Hux is thinking of the Knights. How they outnumber Ren. He doesn’t understand. “What are you doing back there?” he asks, letting the subject drop. 

“Back where.”

“Upon my arse.” 

“What does it feel like?” Ren is close, actually, just from this. Hux’s noises and desperate wriggling against his tongue were almost enough to get him off untouched. 

“What does it feel like, hmm,” Hux says. He closes his eyes and rests his cheek down on the bed again, contemplating this as if it’s a serious question. “Feels like the kind of thing we did at the Academy, only I’d have been clothed.” 

“Cadet Hux was a little slut, huh?”

“No!” Hux gives Ren’s dick an admonishing bump with his ass, as if this will discourage him. “I wasn’t.”

“Mhm. Talk to me as if you were. Are, I mean. Get me off with your words, speech-maker.” 

“You’re ridiculous,” Hux says, but Ren can feel something in him rising to the challenge, liking the idea. “I can imagine the kind of banal filth that you’d get off on hearing from me. It’s hardly the stuff of speeches.”

“Let’s hear some,” Ren says, dragging himself more insistently against Hux’s ass crack.  

Hux groans as if he’s not loving this. It’s rolling off of him so clearly that Ren has to acknowledge that he’s feeling it, too: this is the first thing resembling fun that either of them has had in years. Ten years, fifteen. It’s been that long. Hux distrusts it more than he distrusts Ren, this sense that he can let himself have something enjoyably nonessential even during his rest cycle, behind a closed door, in the arms of someone he must surrender to anyway.

“Go on,” Ren prompts, then he realizes what Hux needs to hear before he can give in to what he wants. “That was an order. Speak filth to your Supreme Leader.” 

Hux sighs and writhes back against Ren, hiding his face against the dirty sheets. “You’re leaking onto me,” he says, voice half-buried. “I feel it. It’s sticky.” 

“Do you like it.”

“No.”

“Liar. You lie here tossing and turning and dreaming of big cocks rubbing all over you.” 

“I do not.” Hux squirms and whines. “Don’t make me hard,” he says, whispering. This might be a sincere request. 

“What if I did. What if I made you go about the ship like that, inside your uniform. Aching and hard for everyone to see.” 

Hux just moans, then gasps when Ren palms his cock. He’s still oversensitive, soft. 

“Or maybe you’re worried about being caught in bed like that,” Ren says. He’s not sure if they’re pretending to be cadets or what’s happening, really. He knows he’s stalling. He’s safe here with Hux, unquestionably in charge. It’s meaningless entertainment. Their bond tells him he needs this. He’s got to get rid of his erection before proceeding with anything more serious, anyway.

“I know you want to put that filthy thing in me,” Hux says, grinding back against him now. “To tear me apart with it.” 

“You look like you need it.” 

“No, I don’t. What, why?” 

“Look at this little ass.” Ren grabs one cheek hard and squeezes. “Begging for dick just by existing.” 

“Let me take these off,” Hux says, twisting fully out of his underwear. “They’re all wet.” 

“Who made them that way.”

“You did,” Hux says, meekly, the underwear still clinging to one ankle. He arches his back, opens his chest and moans when Ren thumbs at one nipple. “Careful,” Hux says, peering up at him. Somehow it feels like the first time they’ve locked eyes a while. 

“Why should I be careful with you,” Ren asks, pinching.

“Nh, because-- I’m at your mercy. Supreme Leader.”

That’s all Ren needs: he spills onto the small of Hux’s back, pressing his dick to Hux’s slick skin and watching himself spurt. Hux absorbs this without comment except to sigh, experiencing what Ren senses as tired accomplishment.

“That’s enough,” Ren says, sitting up behind Hux. He shouldn’t have let this go on for so long. They need to improve their efficiency.

“You’re the one who came twice,” Hux mumbles, eyes closed.

“What are you doing? Sleeping?”

“Yes!” Hux opens one eye and half-turns to glare at him. “This is my rest cycle. And it’s-- Strange, I know, but it works as well as being stimmed does. Falling asleep in a gross puddle like this. Also it helps me wake in just a few hours, feeling disgusting and springing for the shower. It’s my new routine and it's working quite well. Sir. So leave me be. I’m sure you have things to do with your comrades.” 

Ren sits there feeling rejected, even as his come slimes down off Hux’s back and onto the sheets. He thought they were going to talk. Hux is nearly asleep already, dragging the blankets half onto himself as his sweat cools and he starts to feel cold.

In the fresher, Ren cleans himself in a perfunctory manner, imagining what the Knights will say about Hux, the wayward Force bond, the navigators. None of it is as important as what they might say about Rey and how to find her and the others. Ren splashes cold water on his face and tells himself he’s ready. 

When he returns to the bedroom Hux is awake, arranging the messy blankets over himself. He tugs his pillow under his cheek and stares up at Ren. Wanting something. 

“What’s behind those masks, exactly?” Hux asks. “I’m only asking for purposes of anticipating their medbay and dietary needs,” he adds, quick and angry like Ren already told him he doesn’t get to know. “Ordering supplies and so forth.”

Ren doesn’t mind him knowing. He’s glad, actually, that Hux cared to ask. 

“Four humans,” he says. “One Twi’lek, one Vahla.” 

“What’s a Vahla?”

“Near-human. Mostly extinct. None of them need any special supplies.” 

“So they’re all human except the two,” Hux says. Haughty. Suggesting something. 

“That’s right.” 

Hux sniffs. “And the New Republic leadership acted as if we were so vile to keep a mostly human army.”

“Mostly?” There’s an unofficial standing rule that only humans shall wear the Order’s uniform. Other species can ‘help’ underground or behind the scenes, but not by marching across its command decks. Ironically, Snoke was not human. He nevertheless did not object to the First Order’s exclusion of whomever they didn’t want in their marching ranks. Snoke didn’t really care about the Order, or about anyone. Ren knew that about him and saw it as strength, but it’s what killed Snoke in the end. The same thing that destroyed Skywalker’s school. 

_You don’t care about me_.

“Your people are the reason so many in the galaxy fear and distrust humans,” Ren says, not sure why he’s trying to argue this with Hux, or why he’s still standing in the fresher doorway at all.

Hux laughs into his pillow. “ _My_ people! Right, well. Whose grandfather was Darth Vader?”

“Luke believed there were other teachers, unknown to us,” Ren says, ignoring that remark. “Hidden schools in the far reaches. I don’t know if he was right, but it was mainly humans who came to him for instruction.”

“What about the one who died?” Hux asks. “Your seventh Knight. Was he human?”

Ren wants to object to the question, but Hux only knows of Duro because something in the bond pulled it out of Ren and fed it to Hux. And it hadn’t been as painful as Ren might have thought.

“Half,” Ren says. “I’m going now.”

“Yes, I thought so. Farewell.”

Ren heads for his old quarters in a determined stomp, tired now of delaying. When he arrives he braces himself for entry outside the front door, taking a moment to get a read on what awaits him before entering. His sense of what’s going on inside is complicated by his recent relinquishing of these rooms as his own. He can’t shake the feeling that he’s about to give up something else to those gathered inside, when really he’s come here to reclaim their allegiance. 

The lights inside Ren’s former quarters are low. He can feel the attention of his Knights, and the uncomfortable awareness of their proximity, after all this time, reminds him of what it was like to sense his mother on the bridge of that ship full of traitors. 

Though he didn’t want her dead, even then, it had been far worse to sense her again on Crait, hiding behind Skywalker. Sending the _Falcon_ flying at him. And to not feel anything then but that wheeling rage which consumed him.

The Knights approach him in formation, moving together. They all have their weapons, all sheathed. All are still wearing their helmets. They have been conversing through the Force since they arrived, and Ren can feel the remnants of those cautious conversations hanging in the air like whispers. 

“Remove the masks,” Ren says when these echos of words have quieted, all of their attention on him now. “Let me see you.” 

They reach for their helmets together, in a fluid motion, only Ilar out of step for needing to push his hood back first, exposing his lekku before his face. Ren considers using the Force to turn the lights in the room up, but interacting with the mechanics of technology while under heightened stress can have some unpredictable effects, so he leaves them as they are. 

His Knights face him with energy that reads as open and deferential but not entirely surrendered to him or to each other. There are guards up here and there and like armor protecting old wounds. All of them are curious about the changes in Ren. Likewise they all suspect he won’t tell them the whole story about how and why Snoke died. They’re wrong about that. He lets them have a long look at him while he studies each of them in turn. 

Most are unchanged physically. Cort still wears a patch over his missing eye. Edalli keeps her head shaven where her burn scars creep up onto her skull, the same long braid hanging down over her healthy skin on the other side. Sabin is exactly as she was: short white hair, a stare that dissected even Snoke to his core, and the scar she wears proudly. Farnik has pierced his lip, eyebrows and nose, and there’s some new tattooing on his neck. Wyn’s luminosity is undimmed, even her oldest grief around her like a gem-studded shroud. Ilar has lost some weight. Even before the Knights’ arrival, Ren sensed that he has suffered most for their separation.  

“I know you have questions,” Ren says. “Have you rested enough to hear what I require of you first?” 

“Our journeys here were not hard,” Wyn says. 

They all want him to get to the point. Of course. His orders.

“Use the droid for whatever you need,” Ren says, nodding to the one Hux provided to him. It’s mute against the wall, in sleep mode, untouched by them. They’ve disturbed nothing in these rooms. “This space is yours now. It’s been outfitted for you. I offer it as a sanctuary to you during our work ahead.”

“You anticipate our residence here to be lengthy,” Sabin says. 

There’s criticism in this observation, of course. 

“I intend to truly reform as a working order,” Ren says. “I have not sensed that any of you have more binding allegiances elsewhere.” 

He gives them each a mild glower. If he’s soft with them, apologetic, this will never work.

“We’ve long awaited our reformation, master,” Cort says. 

“Conditional upon the vow you made,” Sabin says.

“Which I honored,” Ren says. “Snoke is dead.”

They all let this wash over them, settling on everyone’s shoulders unevenly but also like a breath that’s long needed expelling. Ren feels some of them testing this knowledge through the Force, questing to find some loophole. Let them. He has undertaken the same questing. No remnant of Snoke remains in this realm. 

Which means: ending him was always that simple. A well-time, carefully placed saber was all that was required. Ren could have done it sooner, with the only consequence being his own directionless agony in the aftermath. He never promised the Knights that he would kill Snoke; doing so would have set Snoke upon him at once, and when they separated Ren had no intention of slaying his master. The vow he made was to never call them back to him as long as he served Snoke before them. He had expected to never see them again, therefore, when they left him. Unless Snoke had sent him to execute them, which was a fear that lived in him always. 

He still can’t imagine another circumstance where Snoke’s destruction would have been possible. Anything less catastrophic than trusting someone who would instantly betray him. He wants more than anything to explain this delicate balance of Snoke’s undoing to his Knights, in time. For now he must project decisive strength.

“The Force bond helped you kill him,” Wyn says. Her gaze has drifted into a further dimension, as it does. “A stronger one than ours.” 

“A bond that strong with someone who isn’t Force sensitive?” Edalli says, disbelieving. “With that man who stood behind you when we arrived?” 

“No. That’s something else entirely, a trifling experiment. Snoke created the same Force bond that I used to kill him. It was his manipulation, and he thought therefore that he could control it entirely, that it could pose no danger to him.” 

Like me, he thinks, knowing they will hear this, too. 

“And that’s what you seek,” Wyn says. “The other half of that bond. The one that enabled you to defeat your master.” 

“Not to bring her into our ranks,” Ren says, before someone can assume as much. “She must be destroyed. She was Skywalker’s last apprentice.” 

This settles over them with a new kind of hush. That name. For everyone but Cort and Edalli, he was their former master. The one who taught them to spar and meditate. The same one whose shuttle they stole as they blasted away from the still burning remains of his school. 

“He’s gone,” Sabin says. “We all felt it.” 

“Even we two,” Edalli says, nodding to Cort. “His presence was vast.”

“Only because we held to be such,” Ren says, sharply enough to turn her gaze downward. “Now he is nothing. He threatened to contact me after passing beyond this realm. I’m sure he will try. Perhaps he will reach out to his other former apprentices, too.” He gives each of them a long look, lingering on Ilar the longest. He was the hardest to sway, that night when they fled the flames together. Ren never could have done convinced him without Duro, and he still doesn’t like to think about how this might be true for some of the others as well. It was certainly true for Sabin, but not because of any loyalty to Skywalker. 

“I would not welcome any approach from him,” Ilar says. Ren can admire that he’s answering this challenge directly. “He saw darkness in me, too, master.” 

All but Cort and Edalli bow their heads in recognition of this truth. It was what bonded them even before the killing, long before they fled together. That doubt in their master’s eyes. The fear that it meant they could not be saved. 

Ren saved them. They remember. He feels it such that his eyes burn and he has to look down when they all lift their gaze to him again. 

“He will try to protect his last apprentice,” Ren says. “The girl. Her name is Rey. She’s largely untrained but gifted in the Force in ways I will continue to investigate until she’s destroyed. I have categorized her as a dangerous anomaly since our first encounter. Let us sit together, partake of rituals, and I will tell you all I know.” 

The rituals Ren speaks of are old and simple, things he invented for his small circle of friends, whom he then judged just as often to be rivals, when they were still awkward children living in a forest under Skywalker’s own patchy ritualistic beliefs. Ren’s rituals involve drinking mushroom tea from stone cups, sitting cross-legged in a circle with each person’s knee touching those of the two on either side of them, and rubbing bone ash against their wrists before communing. When Ren and the others from Skywalker’s school were children, the bone ash was a mixture of dirt and a drop of blood from each participant. 

Ben Solo guarded those secrets so carefully, shielding them from Skywalker along with much else. He thrilled for every drop of influence he could whisper to the others without Skywalker knowing. Now, alive in a way that Skywalker will never be again, Ren thrills to have it back, in the dim light of this room, and to feel the others remembering, leaning toward him through the Force, wanting to believe he can truly lead them at last.

He’s left all of the materials here in his rooms: the cups, the ashes, and his supply the thin, dry mushrooms for brewing the tea. It’s a relief to feel the ashes of their dead enemies burning on his skin again, and to know that the Knights are feeling it on their own wrists. He considered taking a piece of Snoke’s corpse for this collection, but ultimately judged it too dangerous. His remains were incinerated clinically, without ceremony, in a First Order machine. Ren kept only the obsidian ring. 

In their circle of counsel Sabin sits to Ren’s right, as she is no doubt still his strongest Knight. To his left sits Cort, the weakest. Ren tells them everything, uncensored. That he touched Rey’s hand through their connection and saw her turning, fighting at his side. That he learned this was only a trick played on both of them by Snoke, that she had seen false visions of his redemption. How it felt to slaughter Snoke’s guards with an ally nevertheless, only to learn she was anything but. 

“We moved together as if it was meant to be,” Ren says. “As if we were two halves. Such was the power of the bond Snoke created. I have many questions about how he did it. He did not share the method with me at any point, of course.” 

“Of course,” Wyn repeats, but it’s not as critical as the energy that comes from some of the others who are thinking the same: of course, of course, you were his weapon, not a true apprentice. Wyn is thoughtful, and it’s like a drink of water, having her direct the whole group away from their angry energy and closer to something like action. It’s ironic, because she’s the angriest of all of them. Her rage is a white hot thing that transcends emotion, an always exploding star. “You have had some success in forging your own bond,” Wyn says. “The experimental trifle, as you say.” 

“Did you split yourself into him?” Farnik asks, shrinking when Ren cuts his eyes to him for the impertinent question. “We were speculating,” he says. “Master, forgive me. It’s a fascinating business.”

“Particularly because Snoke did something similar to bond the seven of us,” Sabin says. “I always assumed he could oversee our communications as he chose, therefore. Were you privy to any evidence that he could?”

“No,” Ren says. “I think he was disinterested.” 

It’s painful to acknowledge, but they all feel the truth in it once it’s said. The Knights were Ren’s playmates, in Snoke’s view. Something to keep his boyish need for companionship sated until he was mature enough to fully commit to his life as Snoke’s sole apprentice. Training wings after the trauma of his departure from Skywalker.

Duro was his training in loss. Also a warning about what would happen to the others if he was not perfectly obedient. Snoke used them as a kind of currency that way, too. 

“He’s gone,” Ren says, like an incantation, to pull them all from their temptation to sink into these thoughts, regrets, and the accompanying anger. “Whatever he witnessed or didn’t, among us.” 

“I ask about this now to ensure the non-Force sensitive you practiced your bonding skills upon cannot intrude upon this counsel,” Sabin says. “I don’t sense that he can, but I’m unfamiliar with this kind of use of the Force.” 

She says so to point out that Ren is, too, except in the sense that he’s had Snoke use it against him.

“He’s a safe subject to experiment on,” Ren says. The bond twists up sharply within him, objecting. He wonders if they can feel it. 

“Because he’s infatuated with you?” Wyn asks. “That’s a dangerous gamble.” 

“No-- It’s not infatuation.”

“I thought I sensed loathing,” Edalli says, cautious. 

“Both readings of him have a degree of accuracy. It’s--” Ren stops himself from saying _complicated_. What he has with Hux is anything but that, and it must remain so. “It’s an unfortunate mistake,” he confesses. “I sought his location for the purpose of recovering him from some of our mutual enemies, and once that was accomplished I was left with this lingering bond. I suspect it might be a remnant of whatever Snoke did to connect me to the girl. I’m susceptible to this, now.” Like a snapped-off coupling link searching for its other half. “Regardless, the undoing of that bond is secondary. We need his army to help us wipe out the girl and her friends. As I said, she is powerful. Traditional weapons will be useful to annihilate the few friends she has left while we focus on dispatching with her.” 

“Are there other Force users in her company?” Ilar asks. 

“Just one.” Ren stares across the circle at Wyn, who senses it before the rest of them. “My mother.”

None of them makes any comment on that, through the Force or otherwise. Their knowing it helps him absorb the weight of it nonetheless. 

There is no discussion of Leia’s fate as they make plans to locate Rey. Ren will have to face that other, longer, harder bridge when he comes to it. Again, and conclusively this time. The Knights can’t help him with the before or the after of it. 

They will help with Rey, however; he understands already that finding her won’t be difficult with their concentrated powers and the shattered but still present energy left behind by his connection to her. There are clues hovering in the Force like soap bubbles, delicate and faint but drifting in her direction. Ren has never been good at finding these things on his own, but the contributions of his Knights sharpen his awareness. 

Something about the seeming ease of mediating together and finding Rey at once makes him back off of doing it immediately, and they discuss other matters more theoretical until Ren begins to feel fuzzy from the combination of the mushroom tea and his recent lack of sleep. Now that the Knights are here, any catastrophe he’d feared in relation to their arrival avoided, he will be able to rest. Having Hux there will likely help, too, though their bond feels strange as Ren leaves the Knights and returns to their shared quarters. He’s not sure how to characterize the strangeness, except that it seems diluted not in strength but removed in proximity, as if being with the Knights has relocated some wires within him that are twisted up with Hux’s. 

He feels an urgent need to see Hux regardless, not even for fucking but for some kind of exchange that isn’t about such serious matters as those he discussed with the Knights. The idea of arguing over administrative nonsense is suddenly appealing, as is telling Hux to be quiet and waiting for him to disobey the order. These are simple things that Ren wouldn’t exactly describe as pleasures, but they hold him steady within this world. The Knights steady him outside of it, releasing him into a sense of living always in the past and the future at the same time that he communicates with them in the present. It’s a relief, having experienced this again, and to be thrumming down to his bones with the collected pulse of their energy. 

It’s also exhausting. He’s out of practice when it comes to leadership that means more than just orders barked at inferiors. Being with Hux is refreshingly straightforward in comparison, even if it’s guaranteed to infuriate him, too. 

Hux is not in their rooms. Ren finds this alarming, then annoying, then he feels as if Hux has disobeyed some direct order by not being here when Ren needs him. Hux is on duty, working, and Ren can’t object, but still he seethes as if Hux has done this to personally offend him. He concentrates on Hux’s whereabouts and senses him in a meeting that has already been going for some hours. Hux stands from the head of the conference table to personally rearrange an advisor’s data. He needs to piss, Ren notes, and is holding it until he can dismiss the meeting. When Ren comes back to himself he finds that he does, too, as if Hux’s discomfort has been transferred to him. 

Bladder emptied and body washed, Ren drops into the bed. Hux has had it remade, again, with fresh sheets. Ren is quickly asleep overtop them. He has the sense he did when he was younger, that things in dreams are coming from him but his friends, some of them awake while he slumbers, won’t let those things find and hurt him. Then the dream shifts, as it always did, and he’s not sure they’re his friends anymore. Duro used to be immune to betraying him even in dreams, his worshipful loyalty something Ben Solo disdained during his waking hours but valued while surrendered to sleep. 

Duro doesn’t exist in Kylo Ren’s dreams. It’s as if he’s been excised, or like it would be against some cosmic rule to meet even a memory of him there. They tried so hard to reach Ben’s dead grandfather through the Force, together and in secret. That never worked, and the kind of wall they came up against feels not dissimilar to Ren’s inability to find Duro in that realm.

Not that he’s ever been able to find any Force ghosts, in dreams or otherwise. It’s one reason he almost wants Skywalker to reach out for him in death. Perhaps others will pour forth alongside him. 

Ren wakes when the bed shifts, the Force bond quickly soothing over his instinct to panic. It’s just Hux, sitting on the other side of the bed and reading from his handheld in the dark, wearing that sweater.

“Can’t you do that out there?” Ren says, gesturing toward the sitting room and Hux’s stupid sofa. He’s pissed off by how glad he is that Hux is here at last and by how much he was wanting him previously, for no real purpose. It seems unallowed that Hux made him wait for this irrational, concerning relief. 

“I was just getting in bed and I got a new message.” Hux doesn’t even look up from the screen, tapping data points here and there. “I’ll only be a moment. How was your meeting with the Knights? Any progress?”

“Yes.” Ren leaves it at that. It’s none of Hux’s business how or when he makes progress with them, at least until it requires moving the army upon the Resistance’s current location. 

Hux doesn’t seem to be listening anyway. He’s staring at his screen, sighing at something that annoys him and opening the projected keypad. Ren lies there listening to the syntho-clatter of Hux’s holo keys, because of course he has the sound feature turned on. There is room in these quarters for a second bed, and Ren could commandeer any living space he likes on this ship, could go to almost any planet in the galaxy and order his army to build a palace there for him and the Knights. And yet. Here he is. 

“Canady’s widow is a real pain in the arse,” Hux mutters. 

“Who?” Ren barks, glowering up at the ceiling. 

“She was married to the captain of that Dreadnought they destroyed. I’m going to have to have her arrested. She can’t threaten my life in an official text communication, what is she thinking? This is not the kind of thing you can allow to slide even once, whoever’s doing it--” 

“Someone’s threatening your life?” The bond flares angrily at the center of Ren’s chest. His shoulders twitch with the need to act, as if there is some enemy lurking at the end of the bed and he must spring up in Hux’s defense. 

“It’s hyperbole,” Hux mutters, still focused on the screen. “I almost prefer it to the amount of passive aggressive vitotrol I’ve been dealing with among these older officers. No one would miss these men if I just had them all killed. They ought to remember that, especially now--” Hux glances over at Ren. “Well, I’m sure you know what they think about you and I.” 

“Give me that thing,” Ren says. 

Hux frowns and hugs his handheld to his chest. “No,” he says. “It’s taken me years to modify it to my exact--”

“Give it to me. Now.”

“You’ll smash it,” Hux says, wincing as he extends it reluctantly toward Ren. “It’s such a waste-- Look, all right, I won’t bring work into the bed again, I promise, she’s just driving me mad with her hysterical grief, I can’t abide grief, it’s so inefficient and humiliating--” 

“You’re inefficient and humiliating.” Ren snatches the handheld and throws it onto the table near the bed that houses their nearly empty bottle of lubricant and some other sex-related things that Ren has been meaning to taunt Hux about since he found them while snooping. 

“I am not,” Hux says. He’s grabbed the hem of his sweater and is holding it over his thighs, probably thinking he can distract Ren with sex, or at least sex-adjacent imagery. If he was really so cold he’d wear some fucking sweatpants to bed under that thing. “I’m not inefficient, anyway,” Hux says, mumbling this under his breath like he can’t help himself. “Humiliating, presently, yes, but what choice have you given me?”

“Me?” Ren snaps, glowering up at him. “You should be kissing my feet for everything I’ve done for you.” He realizes they’re getting into dangerous waters, that Hux hasn’t called him Supreme Leader once since returning from his shift, and there’s also the matter of sharing this bed without having fucked first. Ren waves Hux’s pathetic expression away and turns his back on him. “These are my rooms now,” he says, punching his pillow. “You’ll conduct yourself accordingly or enjoy the humiliation of announcing you’ve been demoted after two cycles as Grand Marshal.” 

That shuts Hux up. Ren lies there fuming and realizes he’s no longer tired. Hux’s energy is wide awake, too, and wounded in a way that claws at Ren’s, making his teeth grind together.

This goes on for a long time: Ren’s awareness of Hux’s presence, the bond tearing at him with something that it wants to style as actual _guilt_. Hux is stewing and brooding alternately, rolled away from Ren and shivering. Ren wants to get up, but the bond seems to be holding him in place. It’s as if the gravity in the room has been turned up eighty percent. He doesn’t want to be here anymore, in Hux’s irritating presence, but he can’t move away.

At some point Ren sleeps again, and when he wakes Hux is gone. 

Good. He took Ren’s warning seriously. Let him quake in his boots and fear that title is temporary, tenuous. That it means more to Hux than anything else is evidence of his ultimate weakness of character, among other weaknesses. 

_Supreme Leader_ , Ren thinks, staring at himself in the fresher mirror for overlong. He lifts his fist but doesn’t send it hurtling into his reflection. He can feel his Knights moving about, their wakeful energy not far from here. They’re wanting his attention, readying themselves for the work ahead. It helps. 

He shares with them his impression that the path to Rey is lined with a kind of bubble-like residue in the Force, and that his trying to grasp for these signals has only resulted in them disappearing in the fist of his mind after he’s reached for them. They pop in his grip, transforming into a useless film. 

“Instead of grabbing for them, we will wait and watch the way they move,” he says, heart slamming with revived certainty while his Knights listen and seek the truth in his counsel, finding it. “They drift toward her, slowly. Only I can sense them, through the boundaries of the connection that Snoke created. But with you all following behind me, I can be pushed along this path far enough to see concrete things in the distance. The place where she hides.” 

“I’d missed your particular poetic view of the Force, master,” Wyn says.

She’s smiling a little, making fun of him, but he doesn’t mind. 

His method is true, the first real wisdom he feels he’s had in years, and they make hasty progress together through one cycle, then another. Ren is careful not to push the quest too far in a hurry. This is delicate, after all, in the sense that Rey catching wind of their pursuit might complicate everything. She’s remarkable when it comes to compromising quickly under stress.

Ren’s increasing peace with his Knights and their task is contrasted by the tension in his private quarters. He’s confounded by what he’s managed to do that’s so isolated him from Hux, after everything else left Hux unfazed. Ren didn’t even really threaten to smash the handheld. That was only Hux’s assumption.

Every time they interact now, Hux is polite. He’s businesslike, cooperative, even quiet. Not quaking in fear but still unwilling to defy Ren in his usual ways, as if he’s figured out that Ren wants him to and is now determined to withhold the truest parts of himself. It’s an insulting strategy predicated on Hux’s belief that Ren needs things from him that must be given freely, which is true in a way Ren loathes. Twice he almost bellows _so I guess your asshole is still sore_ , but their bond chokes the impulse away hatefully, forbidding it. After two cycles without anything resembling sex, Ren can sense that Hux wants it badly, too. He can also sense that, more than sex, Hux wants Ren to be the one who asks for it. 

These games have lost their novelty, Ren decides. On his way back from a meeting with his Knights that left him feeling as if Rey is just within reach, he hurries back to his quarters rather than stretching out far enough to brush against her consciousness, not ready to do battle yet. His Knights are confused but obedient, respecting his command that they wait, that he must do something first.

He’s sensed that Hux is off duty and currently residing in their quarters. Ren is wild from the whiff of near victory and shaken by other things, too: the idea that this could all be over soon, his mother’s life included. There’s also the dangerous impulse to take her as a prisoner. Rey, too. The light within him might still send this all crashing down. He needs to brace himself on Hux, on certainty he can land against like duracrete. 

Hux is standing over the table where they take their meals when Ren enters. Instead of food, the table is spread with baubles and ribbons, shiny things and fine fabrics. It takes Ren a moment to understand what’s going on here. Hux is pink-cheeked, caught doing this. 

“A droid brought these by,” Hux says, swallowing his impulse to sweep everything into his arms and hide it from Ren’s judgment. “Just some things I might incorporate into my uniform, to reflect the promotion.” 

Ren walks closer, says nothing. He surveys the embellishments that Hux was hungrily eying, fashioning them into glorious recognition in his mind. 

“Fine, make fun of me,” Hux says, nose twitching when Ren gives him a smirk that’s mostly in his eyes. “I knew you would. It makes sense from my perspective, people expect this sort of thing to go along with a promotion, it’s an important indicator of protocol--” 

“This?” Ren says, touching a braid of red rope. “This is important, to you?”

“You might consider upgrading your attire as well,” Hux says, flush deepening. Something in Ren that exists alongside their Force bond is feeding on this: he’s missed Hux’s rage, and the way it’s building now is like nourishment pouring into him after a period of starvation. “Rather than going about in rags,” Hux continues, sneering at Ren’s clothing. “It sends the wrong message. Sir.” 

“Mhm. Perhaps you’re right. But let’s redesign your uniform first.” 

Hux holds Ren’s stare, defiance flickering in his eyes. Dread surrounds it. Their bond feels newly strange, distant. As if Hux is holding it away from Ren. As if it’s his to control as he likes.

“So,” Ren says, stepping back and gesturing to Hux with his hand. Hux doesn’t flinch. “Take everything off, first. Let’s start from scratch.” 

This feels different from the other times Ren has ordered Hux to undress. Hux is livid but obedient, wanting something from Ren that he thinks he won’t get. Maybe Ren will surprise him. He has before. 

Hux takes his uniform off slowly, but not in the awkwardly seductive way he attempted when Ren ordered him to. He’s methodical, as if this mode of undressing is part of some protocol. When he’s nude, standing barefoot before Ren, there’s more defiance than dread in his stare. He thinks he can withstand anything. That Ren is really no match for him, deep down. In a place where the Force doesn’t go. 

Hux is a fool to think there is any place like that, and for many other reasons. Ren exhales slowly through his nose. Their Force bond feels asleep, like it’s tired of both of them. 

“Put the boots back on,” Ren says. 

Hux steps into one, zips it up, then the other. He looks obscenely good, standing there wearing nothing else. The boots nearly reach his knees. 

“Perfect,” Ren says. “Your new uniform. Supreme Leader approves.” 

Hux says nothing. He doesn’t believe Ren would really make him march out of here like this. He knows Ren prefers his humiliation to be private. He doesn’t know why, however.

“Oh, but you wanted a little decoration,” Ren says, approaching the table. “Let’s see. Something jaunty would improve this look, I think.” 

Still pursuing the selection, Ren reaches back to caress Hux’s bare ass as he looks over his choices. Hux’s breath catches. They haven’t even touched in days. Ren wakes up expecting to find Hux curled against him, stealing his heat, and instead finds him gone.

“This, I think.” Ren reaches for the braided rope. It’s bright red, knotted at both ends with a little tassel, almost as long as his arm. He brings it to Hux and meets Hux’s eyes as he drapes it around the back of Hux’s neck. Hux’s heart is pounding. He’s waiting for Ren to wrap the rope around his throat and squeeze. As if that’s what this is about. “There,” Ren says, arranging it so that tassels rest just over Hux’s peaked nipples. He stands back, nodding. “That’s better. More dignified.” 

“You hateful fuck,” Hux says, biting this out from someplace so deeply buried within him that Ren didn’t see it coming, though once it’s out he feels like he should have. “You’ve never worked half as hard as I have in your life. Do you know what would happen if I abandoned you? I think you do.”

“Treasonous speech,” Ren says. The bond has awakened within him in shock, everything it carefully stitched together shredded apart. “A punishable offense.” 

Hux says nothing. Regret is spreading through him quickly, real fear flashing in his eyes when Ren walks closer. 

“You need correcting,” Ren says. “Don’t you.” 

Hux’s wild heartbeat is like a scent in the air. Spilled blood, scared prey. Ren’s mouth is getting wet.

“Answer me,” Ren says. He takes hold of the tassels on the rope and tugs Hux forward until their faces almost touch. 

“Do what you must,” Hux says. “Stronger men have tried to break me.”

“You think,” Ren says, jaw clenched, walking backward and pulling Hux along with him, “That you have ever stood in the presence of someone stronger than me?”

Hux doesn’t attempt an answer. His mind is blanked clean with blunt fear and excitement. He’s getting hard for this, whatever it is. Ren is, too. 

They reach the chair in the corner, Hux’s practice throne. Now it’s Ren’s, and he thinks, taking his seat while Hux stares down at him, that he should have a real one, soon. Something less polished than Snoke’s. Made of blackened bones that will fill the nose of anyone who stands before him with the stink of death. 

“Lay yourself down here,” Ren says, spreading his legs. “Upon your Supreme Leader’s mercy. Facing the floor.” 

Hux does as instructed as if he expected this request, lowering himself over Ren’s lap. As he does, Ren removes the red rope from around his neck and folds it in one hand. He strokes it over Hux’s bared ass when Hux arranges himself into position, trying to take the pressure off the rib that’s still healing. Ren opens his legs a bit more, allowing this. 

“You spoke to me in a manner not befitting my title,” Ren says, stroking the rope along Hux’s crack. Hux shivers but otherwise keeps still, very hard now. His hands just reach the floor, both closed into fists. “Like a child, you had a little tantrum in my presence. Didn’t you.” 

“Yes, sir.” Hux sounds proud of himself. 

Ren gives Hux’s ass an experimental swat with the rope, not hard at all. He can feel it rising off of Hux like heat: he’s disappointed that Ren didn’t strike him harder. That he didn’t use his bare hand. 

“I suspect you’re very good at taking punishment,” Ren says. He touches the top of Hux’s head and runs his fingers through Hux’s hair, mocking him with the gentle touch. Hux’s shoulders relax as if he doesn’t mind this type of mocking. 

“You’ve seen me take plenty,” Hux mutters. He’s talking about Snoke. 

“Poor Hux. He was so hard on you. So cold. You deserve a far more personal corrective attention, I think.” 

Ren spanks him again, harder, still with the rope. Hux absorbs it soundlessly, something in him singing. Ren can feel the sting across Hux’s ass cheeks, their Force bond delivering the pain he’s inflicted back to him like a flicker of heat between his legs, making his dick strain harder against the front of his pants.

“Good,” Ren says when Hux takes another blow without flinching. Ren’s other hand is still in Hux’s hair, his fingertips digging in to scratch at Hux’s scalp. “You prefer this, I know.” He brings the rope down again, harder. Hux’s hands open against the floor, fingers scrabbling weakly before they curl back into fists. His dick is leaking onto Ren’s pants. “You’d really rather be good for me than disobey.” 

Hux makes a muffled noise of assent. 

“Ask me for what you want and you’ll get it.” Ren spanks him much too softly with the rope after saying so, just a teasing tap over the burning stripes he’s already left on Hux’s skin. “I already know, Hux. You just have to say it.”

Hux doesn’t hesitate: “Your hand.” His voice is high and tight, embarrassed and grateful. 

Ren places the rope at the center of Hux’s back and reaches for his ass, palming one cheek. “Here?”

“Yes, please, Ren--”

“You want me to slap this greedy ass with my bare hand until it’s blushing and burning for me, is that it?”

“ _Yes_.” 

“Why.” 

“I don’t know,” Hux confesses, his whole body quaking with a kind of silent sob as he says so, head shaking back and forth. “I don’t know, I don’t know.” 

Ren appreciates the honesty. There’s no teasing now: he gives Hux what he wants, hard and fast, bringing his hand down again and again, until Hux is howling and squirming in a kind of searing, angry pleasure that climbs up Ren’s spine, too, every hard slap from his hand reverberating in his own skin, making him pant. Ren has to swallow down moans and bite the inside of his cheek to keep from coming while Hux writhes, rubbing his chest against Ren’s dick in the process. Hux’s skin is so hot, all over, the braided rope sticking to the sweat on his back. His ass cheeks are flaming under Ren’s palm when he rests it there, letting Hux hump against him and whimper, trying to figure out if he wants more or if he’s had enough. Hux’s legs are shaking, sweat streaking down from the creases of his thighs and into his boots. 

“You’ve remembered your place,” Ren says: gentle, like a commendation. He strokes his thumb across one burning ass cheek. “Right here. This is where you want to be.” 

“Fuck,” Hux says, breathing this out. It’s not a denial. 

“Sit up,” Ren says, taking the rope from Hux’s back. 

Ren grips the arms of the chair while Hux struggles to right himself, moving as if he’s physically exhausted. Ren supposes he is; it doesn’t take much. He keeps still as Hux straddles him. Hux reaches for Ren’s shoulders, then pulls his hands back like he’s not sure that’s allowed, bringing them down to rest upon his spread, trembling thighs instead. He’s so hard, wet all down the shaft, precome still beading on the tip just for the thrill of being looked at by Ren, like this. His eyes are pink at the corners. He struggles to hold Ren’s gaze, his bitten lips shaking. 

“Here,” Ren says, winding the rope around the back of Hux’s neck again. He arranges the tassels just so on Hux’s shuddering chest, covering his nipples. “Now you’ve earned it.” 

Hux can’t muster the energy to be insulted. He’s too relieved when Ren reaches for his cock and pumps him with his bare hand, too grateful when his Supreme Leader lets him come. 

Ren almost goes off himself, just watching Hux arch back and ride it out, hips jerking. Hux grabs Ren’s shoulders hard, nails digging in, and that helps Ren to breathe through it rather than coming in his pants. He’s sweat-soaked, too, baking inside his clothes. Hux goes limp and Ren steadies him, holding him by the waist with both hands, smearing come against his hip. Their faces are close; Hux has that tea on his breath. He’s so lost and sweet like this, trying to refocus on Ren’s eyes, wondering again if Ren will kiss him. 

“Take what you want,” Ren says, whispering this near Hux’s mouth, like the start of a kiss already. 

But Hux doesn’t kiss him. He nods drowsily and moves back, out of Ren’s grip, putting his booted feet on the floor. Ren’s hands drop to his thighs as he watches Hux kneel between them and open his pants, drawing out Ren’s painfully hard dick. Just the heat of Hux’s hands makes Ren hiss, his knees spreading wider. Hux’s mouth around the throbbing head is so good that Ren almost goes off right away. He digs his fingers into the arms of the chair to try to brace himself, to last. 

Hux is good at this. So worshipful, moaning, mouth wet. It must indeed be what he wants, because he swallows greedily around every pulse of Ren’s dick when he comes, then pulls back to lick the last drops from the tip. Ren, perhaps, was the one who wanted something else, when Hux was still in his lap.

Ren is loose-limbed in the aftermath, and his mind feels loosened, too. The room is warm and time itself feels less punishing and finite. He reaches for Hux’s hair, but Hux is already standing, his legs steadier now. 

“I think I will use this,” Hux says, taking hold of both ends of the rope that’s looped around the back of his neck. His eyes are clear, like a storm there has passed. Cold, too. “Thank you, sir,” he says, walking backward. “If I’m dismissed, I’ll return to duty.” 

Ren wants to protest. He knows he looks displeased, that his mouth is hanging open. But what would he say? No, come back here. We’re not finished.

He can’t deny that they are, however. He tucks his cock away and shrugs one shoulder. 

“You don’t require my dismissal within these rooms,” Ren says, because maybe that’s what Hux wants to hear. “Go, if you like.” 

Hux does. He gathers his clothes and dresses in the bedroom. Ren sits with Hux’s come on his shirt and feels like he should do something, put a stop to this, but that makes no sense. What he needs to put a stop to is the bond altogether, though he doesn’t feel particularly entangled within it at the moment. He can’t even get a read on Hux’s thoughts when he returns to the sitting room, his greatcoat draped over his arm and the braided rope clutched in his hand. 

“I’m going to see my tailor about the uniform modification, and then I’ll be on the bridge,” Hux says. “We’re having a command meeting about where to next move the fleet in four hours in my war room, if you’d like to attend. We would of course appreciate any intelligence you can provide after consulting with your Knights.” 

“Yes,” Ren says, hating him. “We will have some, by then.”

“Good.” 

Hux turns neatly on his heel and leaves.

Ren could order Hux to linger in his lap like a sex-drunk slave after orgasm. He could command Hux to stay still while Ren pets his hair to his satisfaction. 

He can do anything he wants. 

Asking for it is different, however. That would mean Hux has won. So instead Ren sits alone and picks at the drying come on his tunic, hesitating to go his Knights and tell them it’s time to make the final push toward Rey’s location. 

He’s about to get everything he wants, the last of it, with his Knights gathered around him and Hux kneeling at his feet. 

It will be a long fought battle finally won. Wiping Skywalker’s last apprentice from the galaxy will settle all his doubts, ease all his troubles, and kill the past for good.

He hates the thing within him that tells him that if this were true he would feel differently as he stands to claim his victory.

It’s not a ghost, not really, but it speaks to him in Skywalker’s smug fucking voice, laughing under every word.

 

**

The Knights are ready when he reaches them, expecting him. Their connection has strengthened to a level it was never allowed to maintain when Snoke was alive, and they need not even communicate silently via the Force to know what Ren requires of them. 

The most essential tasks often feel so simple, in the end. As simple as thrusting his lightsaber through Han Solo’s chest. Turning his grandfather’s saber and igniting it to end Snoke’s life. Now he feels himself closing in on Rey and finds that he only has to reach out. Just as they once reached for each other according to Snoke’s machinations. 

Ahead of him in the surrounding void is a thin web, all that’s left of her attempt to keep him out of her mind. He feels it when she senses his attention upon it, the breath that sticks in her chest when it feels as if someone has just brushed their fingertips over the back of her neck, making the hair there stand on end. 

_Ben_ , she says.

Only he hears her. This is the last remnant of their connection, the invisible thread that he floated along, patient and watchful, to find her. 

_Don’t do this. Please_.

He loves her voice. The hope in it is like a drug, so sweet to think of as a thing he could crush out of her, freeing her from its burden. Her accent is like Hux’s. He hadn’t considered that before. 

He opens a hand in his mind and tears through the thin webbing, the last of what connected them ripping away. Just as the connection Snoke created dies in a scream of her fury, he sees it. Her location. The place where she hides with his mother and the others, desperately seeking enough fuel for a hyperspace jump. 

They’re stranded, and now Ren knows precisely where.

He opens his eyes, pitched back to himself by the force of Rey’s final rejection. It doesn’t matter; all the Knights received the same information. Their target has been located.

“Will be good to fight again with all of you,” Farnik says. He’s grinning, restless for combat after all this meditation in search of it, and this energy surges from him and through the others. They’re eager, proud, looking to Ren for confirmation of their achievement. 

“Save the killing blow for me,” Ren says. 

He has respect for Rey’s power, if not her choices. He’ll give her a good death.

“What of the other Force user,” Sabin asks.

 _Your mother, master. Forgive me, but we must know what your orders are_.

“Leave her for me, too,” Ren says, already turning for the door of their quarters. 

He hasn’t yet decided what Leia’s fate will be. When he looks into her eyes, he’ll know.

The Knights accompany him to Hux’s command meeting. Ren enjoys the effect when they walk in behind him, masked and armed for battle. The officers around Hux’s conference table shrink visibly, some of them grabbing for the table as if they want to throw themselves under it. Hux is annoyed, but not afraid. He smiles when Ren gives him the coordinates for the _Falcon_ ’s present location. 

“Then let’s go and put an end to this once and for all,” Hux says, holding Ren’s gaze. 

Ren feels their bond slotting back into the place where it should be. Or where he wants it, anyway. For the first time since discovering Rey’s location he feels almost glad about it.

Almost. He’s thinking of his mother all the way to the bridge. The fleet is already moving, Hux giving orders remotely via his comm as he marches beside Ren, the Knights around them like a coterie and Hux’s officers trailing behind. The Knights are sniffing at Hux’s energy with such avid curiosity that Ren knows Hux must feel it. Hux is far from minding the sensation; he’s always loved the attention of Force users, as much as he resents this power that he doesn’t have. He’s radiant with triumph already, every step he takes echoing with his confidence that he will win. Hux has the same kind of eternal, unstoppable hopefulness that Rey does, Ren realizes. Her childhood was much the same as Hux’s, in that junkyard, unloved and alone. 

_You don’t want to kill her_.

That’s Wyn. Only Ren can hear her. 

_It must be done_ , he tells her, and himself. _It is only unfortunate that she would not join us. I tried_.

 _I meant your mother_.

Ren gives Wyn a look to silence her voice in his mind and doesn’t otherwise respond.

On the bridge, Ren’s vision tunnels to the monitors. There’s the hyperspace jump, the _Finalizer_ arriving first, and a flurry of commands given by Hux. Ren lifts his gaze to the bridge’s viewport. The _Falcon_ is there, floating ahead of them. Adrift. 

“Supreme Leader,” Hux says. His heart is in his throat. Ren can barely swallow around the sensation, sent so strongly from Hux that it’s lodged in him like a stone. “Your orders, sir. We’ve got them locked in place. Cannons are charged and prepared to fire.” 

“Something’s wrong.”

That’s Sabin’s voice at Ren’s shoulder, crackling from her vocoder. 

Ren is frozen, staring at his father’s ship. He feels it, too.

“Sir?” Hux says again, desperate to fire and terrified that somehow, somehow this will go wrong for him, too. 

It already has. All that hope for nothing, always.

“The ship--” Ren can’t say the rest. The _Falcon_ is empty. They’ve abandoned it. Rey knew he would find her. She’s set this up in preparation. It’s a trick.

And now he’s broken the last of their connection in the falling for it. Now she and the rest of them are truly gone, cloaked in the protection of her power.

“Ren, your orders!” Hux shouts, still not understanding. 

Everyone on the bridge is watching him. Hux is practically hyperventilating with enraged impatience. The Knights are reaching out to Ren in confused sympathy, assuring him already that they will untangle the method Rey used to deceive him, that they will look again and find her for him. 

“Bring it aboard,” Ren says, hollowed out with hatred. He can’t even have the satisfaction of blowing the empty _Falcon_ to pieces. He needs to go aboard it and search for any clue Rey will have inadvertently left behind in the making of this trap she laid for him. She’s inventive, remarkable, but sloppy. There will be something. 

He will not rest until she takes her last breath as he watches the light in her eyes go out at last. 

“You want them as prisoners?” Hux says, sputtering. 

_They’re not aboard_ , Ren sends, glaring at Hux and only half-caring if he hears this through the Force. He’ll figure it out soon enough regardless. Ren leaves the bridge without sensing Hux’s comprehension, the Knights following him dutifully. Awaiting their next order already.

In all of Ren’s many fears about their reunion, he never anticipated this worst outcome: that his Knights would bow to his leadership again and expect him to guide them well. Even after this new failure, they are still expecting it, following him through the halls, not even realizing that he doesn’t know where he’s going. That he never will. Someday he will look up from Rey’s corpse, from his mother’s, from all of it burning around him again, and not know what to want next. 

But until then he will cling to what he does know, which is that Rey will suffer for this. He will give her the death deserved by a formidable adversary, as planned, but he will make her watch everything she tried in vain to save crumble to ash first.

 _Go back to your quarters_ , Ren instructs the Knights, unable to even turn and face them while giving this command. _Consider her methodology. How certain we were. How she used my father’s old ship to lay the trap. There’s something to that. She knew him. Saw me kill him. Report to me on your theories when I return to you. For now I must go_.

_Yes, master._

There is no sarcasm in this reply as they offer it up together. Not even from Sabin. They ache for him. They’ve always been his true friends. When Snoke killed Duro in front of them to demonstrate his power and mock their smallness, he forged their real bond. 

They deserve a better master now, just as they did then.

Ren does not expect Hux to be there in their quarters when he enters. In his mind, he was only wandering the halls of the ship for a short time. Moving from one point to another. Facing Hux in the front room, he’s suddenly aware that he was gone for hours, drifting in a void.

“Sir,” Hux says, which is like a slap across Ren’s face. Not the word itself but the way Hux says it, hands pressed tightly to his sides. Eyes wide and unblinking.

He’s terrified. Last time the girl made a fool of Ren, Hux suffered for it.

Ren moves toward him. It’s almost painful, the bond screaming as if he’s already hurting Hux. Such is the certainty of Hux’s trembling fear. Ren has not smashed anything yet in his unseeing wanderings about the ship, and now here is Hux, Ren’s favorite object of wrath, awaiting the cruel turn that he should have known these games would take. 

“The rebel ship has been brought aboard as you ordered, Supreme--”

“Sit.” Ren points to the bed. He doesn’t want to be called that or to hear about the _Falcon_.

Hux can barely force himself to move. He’s thinking he’d rather be choked or thrown into a wall than have Ren take it out on him in this bed, where twice Hux slept with his face buried against Ren’s chest, pretending not to know what was warming him.

But he sits, obedient, and holds Ren’s angry stare.

Ren takes one step toward him, then another. It’s difficult, moving forward against the overwhelming pressure of Hux’s dread. It chills Ren’s bones. He fights through it until he is close enough to kneel between Hux’s legs as they part around him.

Hux watches in motionless disbelief as Ren slumps forward and collapses against him. Ren rests his head in Hux’s lap, nudges his face against Hux’s stomach. He wraps his arms around Hux’s back and breathes in the scent at the center of him: his starched uniform, the receding fear, stale sweat from long hours of worrying that Ren would ruin everything. Hux exhales in a choppy rush, confused. His thighs twitch under Ren’s weight.

“Tell me,” Ren says, barely getting the words out. Humiliated by what he’s asking.

“Tell you?” Hux says. His voice is soft. Still afraid, also indulging. There’s hope in it. 

“Tell me I’m not a failure.” Ren growls against Hux’s thigh and lifts his head, narrows his eyes. “I command you to say it.” 

Hux flinches, not with fear now but shock. “Ren-- Sir-- Supreme Leader. You’re the most powerful man in the galaxy.” 

“That’s not what I asked for!”

“Of course you’re not a failure!” Hux is angry now, too, which is a great improvement. His annoyance seems to make the air in the room breathable again, less like a fog of ice. “Ren, we’re still winning. They’ve barely a hope in hell.” 

Ren wants to ask for more, different words that will fix the thing inside of him that was trashed by Skywalker, Snoke, Rey. He peers up at Hux and says nothing. Hux reaches out, tentative, and strokes Ren’s hair. He does it stiffly, like someone who is only beginning to learn what humans find comforting, but the gesture is no less sincere for his unfamiliarity with it. When he touches Ren’s scar with the back of one finger, tracing down the length of it, they both stop breathing for a moment. 

“Every time I look at this I think of how I saved you,” Hux says. “And I wonder if you even remember it was me who dragged you up from the snow.”

Ren remembers. Another reason to hate Hux, he'd thought. That Hux saw him so weakened, that broken.

“Who else could have done it,” Ren says.  

Hux opens his mouth as if this is an actual question he can answer, not a statement he needs to hear. Ren surges up and presses him to the bed, his lips sealing against Hux’s like there is a secret on his tongue that only Ren’s mouth can keep hidden. There’s been almost no kissing in Ren’s life, and the way Hux eagerly but cluelessly mouths at him tells him there’s been a similar lack of it in Hux’s, but they both keep at it as if they know what they’re doing, despite the occasional drag of teeth and the excess moisture, because that’s their way with each other, always. 

At some point it seems they do know what they’re doing, at least according to what Ren knows about kissing. It should feel good, and like neither party wants to stop. Ren knows it feels that way for Hux, because he’s melted to nothing but astonished gratitude beneath Ren, his legs shuffling about on Ren’s back as if he can’t decide how best to hold Ren against him. He’s holding Ren’s hair with both hands, like he won’t let Ren pull away without a fight. It feels that way for Ren, too. Like something he would fight to keep.

He moves from Hux’s mouth to his neck and devours him, shoves two fingers into Hux’s open mouth to reward him for gasping so prettily. Hux sort of gurgles, licks at Ren's fingertips and then sucks him down to the webbing, humping his stomach. 

It’s not a game just now, Ren thinks, or maybe it’s Hux thinking so and Ren agreeing. Their bond winds around them like rope. Ren wants to grab the ends of it and knot it in place.

“Can I fuck you?” Ren asks, mumbling this against Hux’s open mouth when he’s pulled his fingers free.

“Yes,” Hux says, nodding. Everything he has in Ren’s hands, in a way that makes Ren realize how little he actually held before. “Please, yes, yeah.”

Hux takes his clothes off while Ren crawls toward the bedside table, groping for the lubricant. He feels like Hux has just pulled him out of some new snowbank, like he again owes Hux his life. This time he doesn’t grudge Hux the debt, or the sense that Hux is holding all of him in his hands, too. 

“Yeah?” Ren says when Hux presses down to meet the inward slide of Ren's slick finger. Hux is open-mouthed and still half-dressed, only having managed to get his uniform tunic halfway open before Ren was upon him, kissing him again. 

“Mhmm,” Hux says, nodding. He bites at Ren’s bottom lip, licks it, and sighs into Ren’s mouth when their tongues slide together again. 

Ren takes his time feeling Hux out, easing him open. He has no plan beyond this moment, or for this moment. Hux doesn’t seem to either, he’s all astonishment. Ren isn’t sure why, because they’ve done this before, and Hux has known for some time now that Ren wants it more than anything. Still, when Ren slides his cock into him, Hux gasps and unfolds into this feeling like it’s something brand new. Ren licks over and into Hux’s lips to calm him down, and for a while that’s all they do, Ren buried inside Hux like a throbbing second heartbeat, both of them searching the other’s eyes for some kind of rulebook or cheat code or clue that should be there but isn’t. 

What transpires between their bodies is the most basic building friction, dripping sweat, Ren coming hard and Hux following when Ren pumps him. Ren kisses Hux as he pants through it, testing to see if he’ll taste different. He’s not even sure what the answer is, keeps trying to come to some kind of conclusion and laughs when Hux whines in a particular indignant way, because Ren has kissed his lips sore.

Ren pulls out and gathers Hux against him, giving him no chance to escape. Hux is similarly determined, his face pressed to Ren’s throat, short nails clawed into his shoulder. He pushes one leg between Ren’s thighs in a possessive way, cinching Ren’s lower half in place, too. 

“Don’t want to break you,” Ren says, muttering this into Hux’s sweat-damp hair. 

“So don’t,” Hux says. 

He’s half asleep, too. After a few more heavy breaths they’re both more than halfway surrendered to the consuming release of real sleep, slack against each other and drifting. 

Ren has mild dreams, at first. Bits and pieces, just impressions mixed with memory. Hux appears in a few of them, always at the corner of Ren’s eye but not quite materializing fully, the glimpses of him feeling like not enough, a trail that Ren is walking without finding what he’s really looking for.

Things darken, then blacken to ash. Before long Ren is standing in the void, watching it suck Hux down into its oily puddle again. 

This time Ren is ready. He doesn’t hesitate. On hands and knees he crawls forward, to the edge of the sucking darkness, and grabs for Hux. 

Whatever lies beneath pulls harder this time, and Hux is in pain, crying in Ren’s arms as Ren tries to yank him free without tearing him in half. Ren screams and closes his eyes, tells the light still within him that he will serve it, he will, if only he gets to keep what belongs to him. This one thing. 

The void relents just enough, and Ren tumbles free from it with Hux in his arms. Hux is whole and clinging, whimpering his gratitude against Ren’s shoulder, so warm. 

In the dream, which is beginning to feel like something else already, Ren staggers backward, guiding Hux away from the danger. Hux is shaking, still afraid, but Ren has him safe in his arms. He tells Hux so, whispering reassurance in his ear, rubbing his back. Promising that he won’t fall into that sucking pit of nothing again. Ren won’t ever let it take him. 

Ren will do anything, anything. He says so.

The laughter comes from above and behind him, and it’s so familiar. 

The wrong kind of familiar.

Ren doesn’t want to look. The weight in his arms changes. He knows what he’ll see.

It’s Hux, perched on a shelf of Ren’s own making, out of reach. He’s grinning, his shoulders bouncing as he laughs at what he’s engineered down below.

But that can’t be right. Ren turns back to the Hux in his arms, holding him out for inspection.

It’s not Hux at all. Just an empty greatcoat with red rope braided around the collar. 

When Ren whirls around to turn his wide-eyed gaze back on the laughing Hux above him, that Hux goes still and quiet, smiling. He winks, and it strikes Ren like a blow to the chest, wakes him up.

He’s so jarred by the warning from the dream that he expects a green lightsaber humming over the bed, or Snoke hissing at him from Hux’s body, cackling with perverse victory. 

There’s nothing like that. Hux is asleep, trusting and surrendered, curled against his chest. Ren doesn’t even want to pull away from him, heart slamming and breath coming fast, the corners of the dark bedroom seeming to threaten Hux as much as him. He sits up on his elbow and holds his arm over Hux, waiting to understand. 

The understanding comes, slowly and like a tightening pain in his gut that will eventually make him sick. He fights it, gets out of bed and goes to the fresher, splashes water on his face. His hands won’t stop shaking, and he can’t get the sound of Hux’s victorious laughter out of his head. That was Hux, somehow. The real Hux. It was as if _Hux_ was the one giving Ren this warning. About himself. And not meaning to.

The bond. Ren consults it, bracing both his hands around the sink in the fresher. He stares through the open doorway and into the bedroom, at Hux. He hasn’t moved in bed. He’s so tired, so relieved.

Unguarded. 

Ren has very few scruples. One he’s adhered to without even needing to think about it is the unwillingness to violate a person during sleep. It’s the most egregious betrayal he’s ever known, such that he would be betraying himself if he did it to another.

He moves only lightly toward Hux’s mind, at first. 

The sense that he should have known sooner is what sucks him all the way in, down to the darkest depths of Hux, to what he’s seeking.

It unwinds like a holo film playing in reverse. The cell, the scarcity of guards, the clues that shouldn’t have made sense, Hux’s insistence that he offered information prior to the mission that Ren simply didn’t notice, the foolhardy plan to attack a culture like Katalon’s almost directly following the debacle on Crait, not after they had secured weaker territories. 

Hux’s willingness to fold at Ren’s first objection to his plan to invade Katalon fully. 

That Hux is extremely well-versed in the kind of tech that would be used to cloak the origin of a holo message transmission to his own ship. The spring in his step when he returned. As if he wasn't only unfazed but revived by his time in captivity.

The information about mine carts passing over his cell, when the facility had clearly been long abandoned. 

He wanted Ren to find him, then. But before that, before Ren reached out with the bond and stunned Hux to his core by caring at all, he had never imagined Ren would even try. 

Hux kidnapped himself. He hired bounty hunters to attack his small convoy and pose as officials from Katalon. Risked everything on a desperate gamble so that he could crawl back to the First Order with evidence that Supreme Leader Ren’s poor decision-making had put him in danger, caused him great pain, but not defeated him. He would have been able to stand before his troops and officers, battered and heroic. Knowing just how much appearances matter. How they can sway the fate of empires. 

Ren showing up and coming for him was unexpected. Hux pivoted accordingly when he saw another advantage. He tried his luck offering sex, thinking that would be the quickest way to get lonely, desperate Ren further on his side. This was also a way to hide his plans behind simpering, sluttish behavior, which would stoke Ren’s vanity so thoroughly that he wouldn’t go looking deeper. Ren would think that what he had uncovered was the truest Hux: in Ren’s thrall, grateful for every touch. 

Ren walks into the bedroom, toward the bed. Hux stirs against the mattress. He’s cold. Beyond that, distantly, he feels that something is wrong. Not through the Force bond but in the most basic, animal way. In the way of a thing that knows it is being hunted.

When Hux wakes, Ren is standing just at the edge of the bed. Staring at him. Hux blinks and stretches, pushing both arms up over his head. He’s affecting a sense of calm. He hasn’t missed the look on Ren’s face. Their bond tells him enough.

“What,” Hux says.

It’s a softly spoken word that might be a question or a confession. _What’s wrong_ , he might mean, or _What did you expect me to do, roll over and give up?_ There are many potential implications inherent even in either of those interpretations. 

Hux is good at that. He’s clever with double-meanings, skilled at letting those he wants to manipulate interpret the vagaries of his responses in whichever way they most want to. 

“Nothing,” Ren says, in the same fashion. Leaving Hux to make of this response what he likes.

Hux rolls over. Shows Ren his bare back and waits to see what he’ll do.

Ren can feel his little heart hammering. So hard.

Ren crawls into the bed and moves closer, closer. Slides himself up against Hux and hugs around him from behind. Now he can feel Hux amping his reaction to this embrace, every thought circling around it as if it’s the only thing he can hold in his mind: how good it feels to be held, how much he wants Ren to stay and keep him warm. Everything he wants Ren to sense and to think he’s uncovered from some deep reservoir of Hux’s most private secrets. 

There’s truth in it. There would have to be, for this to work as well as it has on Ren’s ego, pride, and his foolish, seemingly indestructible belief that he needs someone at his side. It’s true that Hux wants him and has for years, and when Hux presses back against the heat of his chest like he wants to feel more of it, that’s also true.

But there are other truths beneath those Hux has plastered over every surface of his mind to distract Ren from the rest.

Ren should kill him now. He should drag Hux undressed out into the halls of this ship and make an example of him. 

He shouldn’t be impressed. Curious about the precise locations of other hidden daggers. Strangely fond of the idea that Hux is spoiling for a real fight after all.

And yet.

He tightens his grip on Hux, letting his forearm rest heavily over the still-healing rib. There’s a twinge of pain that Ren feels, too. Hux makes a soft noise under his breath. It’s not a protest. 

Ren will keep him closer than ever, for now. 

 

 

**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A next installment in this series is coming soon.... from Hux's POV :> !!!~
> 
>  
> 
> My vision of the KOR is heavily based on [this fan art by Eli Hyder](https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/659bjw/the_knights_of_ren_by_eli_hyder/).
> 
> Wyn's culture is based on [the info about the Vahla here](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Vahla), and there will be more about it future installments.


End file.
